Gaining Authority and Legitimacy: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Golden Temple c. 1920–2000 by Gurveen Kaur Khurana A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology and History) in The University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Farina Mir, Co-Chair Professor Mrinalini Sinha, Co-Chair Associate Professor William Glover Professor Paul C. Johnson Professor Webb Keane
Transcript
Gaining Authority and Legitimacy: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee
This dissertation is only a part of the journey that began more than ten years ago, and
there are many that have made it possible for me to get here. I would like to take this
opportunity to thank them for their support along the way. My greatest debt is to my
dissertation advisors Mrinalini Sinha and Farina Mir. Mrinalini has supported me through
out and has always been a source of intellectual support and more. She has allowed me
the freedom to grow and gain from her vast knowledge, while being patient with me
finding my way. There are no words that can express my gratitude to her for all that she
has done. Farina Mir’s rigor sets high standards for us all and will guide my way over the
years. The rest of my committee, Webb Keane, William Glover and Paul Johnson have
all been wonderful with their time and support through this dissertation writing. My
deepest thanks also to Dilip Menon, Shahid Amin, Sunil Kumar and Neeladri
Bhattacharya for the early intellectual training in historical thinking and methodology.
Jennifer Hughes and Piya Chatterjee ensured that I got to the right place to get this
dissertation done. To them all, I owe my deepest gratitude.
The staff at the History Department were unfailingly supportive and have always
been there to help in all manners possible. I want to especially thank Diana Denny and
Susan Kaiser for responding calmly and professionally to panicked emails. Diana has
always found an answer to my questions, as I did this dissertation remotely. The Anthro-
History department has backed me, even when I doubted myself. They have provided
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support in terms of funding and other support that goes above and beyond any
institutional support one can ask for.
I have made some amazing friends at Michigan, and these friendships have
sustained me when nothing else could. Hafsa, Tapsi, Faiza, Joost, Cyrus and Emma, Anna
McCourt, Hoda, Courtney, and others were always there to support with their advice, or
with food to recover and get going again.
My fieldwork was made possible with the help of many a generous spirit. Raja bhaji
and Mandeep bhabi gave me a home to come to after hours of looking at endless amounts
of archival material, which I never thought I would find. Simran, their daughter, was a
delight to come back to every evening. Their friends and neighbours supported me and
opened their hearts and homes to find answers to questions that kept coming. Professor
Jeevan Deol gave me a personal tour of the Golden Temple that enlightened me to many
ideas tested in this dissertation. He is the kind of academic I hope to be someday. He
kindly shared his contacts with me in the field, once again amazing me with his
generosity. And finally, he found books that he knew I was looking for in rare book stores
in Amritsar and parcelled them to my contact in Amritsar when I was at other archive
offices. Daljit Ami, the man behind the Punjab Digital Archives, allowed me to sit in their
office when they were still organizing their findings. These archives are paving the path
for how future archives will be, and I am excited to see what his team pulls together.
In Amritsar, Apinder Singh and Bagicha Singh (Head of Sikh Reference Library)
were not just sources of information and go-to’s for more material but became friends
who gave me insights into the history of Amritsar in the twentieth century from their
perspectives. With cup after cup of very sweet tea, Bagicha bhaji would speak to his
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experiences in the Punjab and how things have changed. Apinder has been instrumental to
this dissertation. He came up with the idea of the bungas (literally “rest house” in Persian)
as an important piece of history to be examined and helped me gather materials on this
piece of Punjab history that no longer physically exists. He would continuously come up
with interesting ideas and I know that he will be a well-renowned scholar someday. Hita,
my sister-friend helped dig more legal cases for the bungas, for which I will be grateful
forever.
Sardar Onkar Singh (may he rest in peace) was the best discovery on this research
trip. He was extremely enthusiastic about the Ramgarhia museum being built and took
pride in being its in-charge. He gave me a lot of insights into the Ramgarhia Bunga and
the plans for this going forward. He also gave me the contact details for Colonel Iqbal, the
last of the Bungai family, who lived in the Bunga. Colonel Iqbal opened his doors to my
many questions and shared his families’ private papers and photographs of the Bunga as
the last residents. I owe him the greatest gratitude.
Satish Loomba, Ami Jija, Dr. Anita Hemrajani and Mahender Hemrajani helped in
organizing accommodations and contacts to get access to archives and private papers.
Using their contacts, I managed to get my work done swiftly in the Punjab State Archives
and the manuscript section of the Guru Nanak Dev University. Friends in Singapore were
instrumental in my thinking and writing this dissertation. I would like to thank Shobhit
Choubey and Fiona Alexander for giving me courage, space and inspiration to get my
thoughts together and be more coherent in my writing.
Finally, this dissertation would not be complete without the unfailing support of my
friends and family. Neha Malik, Chanpreet Khurana, and Tejkaran Khurana pushed and
encouraged me to keep at it. My parents answered endless questions and gave me the
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strength to finish the task I began many years ago- they are the reason I ever started this
work. Mukesh and Samarth, my allies, my support system, suffered through the bad
moods and anxiety as I ploughed through, all the while uplifting my mood. Without them,
this dissertation would not be complete.
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Table of Contents
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... iii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................... ix
Glossary ......................................................................................................................................................... xi
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... xviii
The Origins of the SGPC ............................................................................................................................ 6
The SGPC and its Leadership ................................................................................................................... 17
Dominant Narratives in Historiography .................................................................................................... 19
Why the Golden Temple? ......................................................................................................................... 30
Method and Sources .................................................................................................................................. 35
Chapter Plan .............................................................................................................................................. 38
Chapter Two: SGPC’s Rise to Power: Institutionalizing Gurdwaras by Routinizing Functions ........ 42
Setting New Standards: Cleanliness and Orderliness in the Golden Temple ............................................ 53
Professionalizing the Cadres: Driving Accountability and Standardization across Gurdwaras ................ 62
Building Projects: Power, Expansion, and Routinization of the New Norms ........................................... 70
Competing Ideas of Building Projects: Objecting to SGPC’s Narrative ................................................... 83
Building Gurdwaras: Recovery, Repair, and Signs ................................................................................. 110
Disciplining Practices and Bodies through Pilgrimages ......................................................................... 115
Chapter Four: Resisting Desecration: Preserving Bungas as Symbol or Material.............................. 121
Claiming Authority: Thinking Through and with the Past ...................................................................... 130
Inheriting the Bunga: Private Property or Waqf Land?........................................................................... 136
Moral Claims and Sikh Representatives ................................................................................................. 143
Bungas as Heritage: Contesting Visions of the Sikh Past ....................................................................... 150
Chapter Five: “To Serve with Honour”: Deras and the Practice of Kar Seva in the Twentieth
Century ....................................................................................................................................................... 159
Sants traditions and Deras ....................................................................................................................... 162
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Deras’ Influence on Kar Sevas: The Continuation of Traditions in the Twentieth Century ................... 171
New Riches: Gold Plating the Dome at the Golden Temple ................................................................... 190
Chapter Six: Layered Authority: SGPC and its Impact on the Management of the Golden Temple
British Library Board (Photo 222/ (47)) ........................................................................... xvi
Figure 3: Aerial View of the Golden Temple (2012)...................................................... xvii Figure 4: The Golden Temple and its surroundings in 1930s–40s .................................... 30 Figure 5: Historic Jhanda (Flag) Bunga ............................................................................. 31 Figure 6: Walking Past the Jhanda Bunga (1930s) ............................................................ 32
Figure 7: “Hindu Priest of Guru in the Golden Temple reading from his Sacred Book,
Guru Granth Sahib,” 1903, Glass Lantern Slide, James Ricalton, New York State
Archive, A0345, printed in Amardeep Mandra’s The Golden Temple of Amritsar:
Reflections of the Past (1808–1959) .................................................................................. 55 Figure 8: “The Pavement, Amritsar,” December 1905, H.E. Prevost Battersby, printed in
Amandeep Mandra, The Golden Temple of Amritsar: Reflections of the Past (1808–1959)
Figure 12: Udasis and Ascetics Meditating at the Amrit Sarovar in the Golden Temple
Complex, courtesy Punjab Digital Library ........................................................................ 63 Figure 13: Marble Memorials in the Golden Temple Complex, taken during field work in
Figure 14: New Structure of Gurdwara Dukh Bhajani Beri in 2014 ................................. 86 Figure 15: New Building of the Gurdwara Bandi Chorr (2012) ...................................... 113
Figure 16: Painting of the tank of Amritsarji founded by Guru Ram Das Sahib, c. 1855-60
Sikh Gurdwara Act 2014, which allowed the creation of a new body of management for
Haryana gurdwaras exclusively. The creation of the Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Act of 2014
led to further conflict and SGPC members in turn refused to vacate their positions of
management in Haryana, resulting in a stand-off between the incumbents and the newly
appointed managers of the gurdwaras in Haryana. Not only was the SGPC’s power being
fragmented but it was incurring a loss of territory and funds received from these
gurdwaras.
This recent incident sheds light on several issues discussed in this dissertation.
One, the study of the organizational structure of the SGPC, which is physically situated in
Amritsar—its headquarters, but wields influence over the historic gurdwaras directly in
the regions of Haryana and the Himachal Pradesh and indirectly on gurdwaras across
India and globally. Second, the tactics and methods applied by the SGPC to wield this
influence over the gurdwaras and the communities associated with these gurdwaras. For
example, the “occupation” of gurdwaras in Haryana by the Sikh leaders is an old Akali
tactic that was predominantly used during the Gurdwara Reform Movement and
eventually led to the successful creation of the SGPC through a Sikh Gurdwara Act in
1925. Following the tactics applied by the SGPC, this dissertation traces the
institutionalization of Sikh practices and authority in the space of the gurdwara. And
finally, by placing the subject of this study in the very space of the gurdwara, this
dissertation moves the subject of reformed and sanitized Sikh practices away from
discourse to a layered and nuanced embodiment of Sikh institutional religious practices
amongst the wider Sikh community.
3
The SGPC came into existence in opposition to the precolonial gurdwara
management system in place, wherein traditional mahants (chief priest/head of temple)
presided over and managed gurdwaras, since late seventeenth century. Gurdwara
management had undergone significant changes within the precolonial period, especially
under Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign of 1799-1839 and continued under colonial rule when
new structures and systems were put in place to manage gurdwaras in the Punjab,
particularly historic gurdwaras that tended to receive larger number of visitors.2 These
systems trickled down to smaller gurdwaras across the region. The SGPC inherited the
management system laid down in a document known as Dastur al-’ Amal. Dastur al-’Amal
literally means a revenue or administrative guide book and was created to stabilize the
management of gurdwaras in the Punjab in 1859 under the orders of the British officials.
There seems to have been some anxiety related to the religious management of the
gurdwaras and the more mundane and administrative management of the gurdwaras. Dastur
al’-amal laid out clearly the responsibilities of each functionary in the gurdwara and how it
was to be managed, including which resources were available for which particular works.
Sardar Sodhi Hazara Singh, writing in 1938 says that the motivation behind this document
was for the British officials to gain better footing in the gurdwara management, for there
were concerns that the gurdwaras could potentially become breeding grounds for dissent.3
Ian J. Kerr on the other hand suggests that the document was a way for the British to
extricate themselves from the management of the gurdwaras, which after the 1857 rebellion
2 Ganda Singh (ed.), Dastur al-amal, (1883); Ian J. Kerr, "The British and the Administration of the Golden
Temple in 1859," Panjab Past and Present, Vol 10 (1976); Madanjit Kaur, Golden temple: Past and
Present, (GNDU, 1983); Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Sikh Past: History and Representation
in Sikh Tradition, (OUP, 2012). 3 Sohi Hazara Singh, A History and Guide to the Golden Temple, Amritsar to the Golden Temple, Amritsar,
(1938)
4
was to be avoided at all costs.4 Notwithstanding the intentions of the British officials, the
document is detailed and provides clear guidelines, which informed SGPC’s practices as
well. For instance:
1. Guru Ram Das was the sole undisputed owner of these Gurdwaras.
Everyone was equally entitled to serve him. The Pujaris in service were to
work on fixed daily allowances according to their duties, as heretofore. 2.
The Granthis and Pujaris could pass on their shares to their progeny or
Chelas as they wished. 3. In addition to these allowances from the Golden
Temple Treasury, they were also permitted to receive personal gifts from
the visitors as well… 6. The manager was not to interfere in the questions
relating to religion; he was to look after the character and conduct of the
people in the temple, to supervise the payments made in his presence, to see
that all works was carried out peacefully… The government would appoint
the managers.5
The SGPC leadership fiercely contested some of these practices laid out in the
document. For example, point 2, wherein Granthis could leave their progeny their jobs,
any resources gathered and any “personal gifts” from the visitors. The leadership
informed by the Singh Sabha period of Sikh reforms in the late nineteenth century saw all
resources and gifts as belonging to the gurdwara only and not to any individuals. This
was, in fact one of the key reasons that the SGPC was formed, to manage the resources of
the gurdwara in a transparent way. In other words, the SGPC leadership inherited a
structure for gurdwara management, but they reformed it to suit their own agendas and
policies of Sikh practices in the gurdwaras, which were deeply influenced by the Singh
Sabha reforms and reformers.
4 Ian J. Kerr, “British Relationships with the Golden Temple, 1849-90”, Indian Ecoomic Social History
Review, 21, 2 (1984), pp. 139-151. 5 Sodhi Hazara Singh, Ibid., p. 108-110.
5
Although the SGPC remains a powerful body and wields a lot of influence amongst
the Sikh community, both in India and outside, there remain significant tensions and
fissures, evident from the bid for independence of the Haryana SGPC. This dissertation
focuses on the SGPC from its formation in 1920 and highlights the kinds of challenges it
has faced and how it has evolved from its original structure and functioning to attaining a
certain degree of authority. I begin by examining the dominant practices authorized by the
SGPC and go on to show how this democratically elected management body had to work
hard to gain influence over Sikhs within and beyond the Punjab.
The SGPC has never had unanimous support and has had to build this influence
through different strategies. These strategies included, for example, organizing
pilgrimages, doing kar sevas (a specific type of voluntary community work) and
expanding the gurdwaras’ perimeter by way of breaking down centuries-old bungas (rest
houses). The SGPC attempted to sanitize Sikhism, an agenda it inherited from the Singh
Sabha movement, but such an exercise was never complete. There are ten living Gurus
according to Sikh religion. It is believed that the Guruship was challenged by several
heretical leaders, mostly the sons or brothers of the presiding Guru, when this “light” and
“learning” was passed to the next Guru. For example, the fourth Guru’s son, Prithi Chand
challenged the Guruship of the fifth Guru and his brother, Arjan and claimed his own
Guruship. These “false” Gurus have been marked as minas (liars) in Sikh tradition and
been left out in the canonized traditions of Sikhism. After the tenth Guru passed, he
proclaimed that there will be no more human Gurus and the Guruship passed to the sacred
scriptures, which was now understood to embody human elements. Despite canonizing
the Sikh Gurus and the Adi Granth (sacred scripture which is thought to be a living being
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by the Khalsa Sikhs) as the spiritual heads of the Sikh faith, several Living Gurus
continued to have a large following among the Sikh community. Moreover, the efforts of
the SGPC never went uncontested.
In other words, a diversity of Sikh traditions and practices continue, even after the
formation and the subsequent rise of the SGPC. The dilemma of the SGPC, as this
dissertation argues, was precisely this that even as the SGPC extended its control over the
Sikh community through the management of the gurdwaras, it was neither able to stamp
out existing rival traditions nor able to prevent the emergence of new opposition. On the
contrary, the SGPC acquired the legitimacy and authority by incorporating and sanitizing
some of the continuing traditions that could not be overcome, for example the tradition of
sants and their deras. This dissertation calls this the “layered” authority of the SGPC.
Following Tony Ballantyne, this dissertation suggests that alternative visions of Sikhness
could not be stifled or done away with, and no one way of being Sikh predominated
despite the many attempts made by Sikh reformers in the decades preceding the SGPC’s
formation. Multiple identities continued to exist and be articulated that interacted and
intermingled with issues of caste and region.6 This dissertation focuses on the SGPC from
early 1920s to early 2000s and follows the different tactics deployed by the management
body to resist challenges and survive as the predominant Sikh representative body.
The Origins of the SGPC
The SGPC came into existence in response to the Gurdwara Reform Movement from
1920 to 1925 and attended to the immediate issue of gurdwara ownership and
6 Tony Ballantyne, Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Fomrations in an Imperial World,
(Duke University Press, 2006), 166–7.
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management. Following the earlier successes of Singh Sabha – a Sikh religious reformist
body that had sanitized Sikh thoughts and institutions theoretically – the SGPC now took
on the task to sanitize the practices in the gurdwara and challenged traditional
individuals’ ownership of gurdwaras and argued that only the community could own
gurdwara properties.7 Singh Sabha reformers preceding the SGPC focused on reforming
Sikh practices, rituals, internal caste issues, education and the upkeep of gurdwara
properties.8
Some scholars argue that the Singh Sabha reformers “constructed religious
boundaries” in a landscape where religious identities and practices were fluid.9 Some
scholars have even suggested that there was no Sikhism or Sikh identity before colonial
rule or the reformist movement and that the British played a central role in creating an
“orthodox” identity.10 More recently scholars like Arvind Mandair, Purnima Dhavan and
Anne Murphy have argued that there was a strong pre-colonial Sikh identity but it was
not manifest in the same ways as it came to be seen and practiced under colonial rule.11
All these works broadly look at the scale of changes brought on by the advent of colonial
rule, to understand how colonial forms of knowledge and information gathering impacted
socio-religious associations and practices. Tony Ballantyne states that we need to
7 Tan Tai Yong, “Assuaging the Sikhs: Government Responses to the Akali Movement, 1920–1925”
Modern Asian Studies, Issue 29, No. 3, (1995), pp. 655–703. 8 N.G. Barrier, The Sikhs and their Literature, (Delhi, Manohar Book Service, 1970); Anshu Malhotra,
Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab, (OUP, 2004); Harjot
Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh
Tradition, (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, Oxford
Handbook of Sikh Studies, (OUP, 2014). 9 Harjot Oberoi, ibid, (1994). 10 Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making, (University of California Press, 1985). 11 Arvind Mandair, Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation
(Columbia University Press: 2010); Purnima Dhavan, When Sparrows became Hawks: The Making of
the Sikh Warrior 1699-1799; (OUP, 2011); Anne Murphy, Materiality of the Sikh Past; (OUP, 2012)
8
understand Sikh history and the reforms as a “complex interaction” between pre-colonial
and colonial milieu. Calling it a “point of recognition”, Ballantyne says that we need to
understand Sikh histories in broader terms that includes the experiences of travel,
diaspora connections and cultural assumptions.12 Following Ballantyne, this dissertation
seeks to understand the organizational structure of the SGPC and its policies, organized
events and subsumption of competitive ideas, in a broader context and wider webs of
interactions and connections. For instance, in chapter 5, the kar sevas performed by the
diasporic community is understood from the perspective of the sant traditions wherein the
practice and the tradition emerged. By seeing it in continuity, albeit significant
differences in resources, technology and public support, the cultural assumptions and
intentions of the activity become clearer and are an evolution in present context.
Another area that scholars have debated in the study of Singh Sabha reforms is the
areas that the reformers focused upon. For instance, some scholars suggest that the bulk
of the reformist work was in women’s reforms, wherein women’s bodies now became the
singular site upon which men’s honor and respect was transcribed.13 Other scholars had
highlighted the embodiment of the reformers’ focus on Sikh rituals and symbolic
practices that highlighted the differences between Khalsa ideology over Sanatan Sikhs.14
More specifically, Harjot Oberoi states that the Singh Sabha reformers focused their
energies on the “G-trinity” their tenure. 15 These were Guru (spiritual leader) of the Sikh
12 Tony Ballantyne, Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World,
(Duke University Press, 2006). 13 Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism, (Hurst,
2001); Anshu Malhotra, Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial
Punjab, (OUP, 2004); Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘manly Englishman’ and the
‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century, (Manchester University Press, 1995). 14 N.G. Barrier, op cit. 15 Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh
Tradition, (University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 328.
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community, Granth (sacred scriptures) and the last living Guru for the community, and
the Gurdwara (Sikh temple) where the community congregated and created the Guru in
the sangat. Oberoi writes,
Despite great ambiguity and diversity in this process of religious
reaggregation, it is possible to provide a general account of religious
systematization under the Tat Khalsa. Three core doctrines—Guru, Granth and
Gurdwara (the three G’s)—became the foci of Tat Khalsa praxis. These three
G’s became in fact the litmus test of authentic Sikhism… An interdiction on
following living gurus was acceptable as a theological principle, but how were
people to cope with the woes of mundane life?... The Tat Khalsa solution to
this dilemma was simple and in line with an evolving theological principle:
the Adi Granth as a sacred repository containing the writings of the Sikh gurus
could perform all the functions not only of religious virtuosi but also of
exorcists, medical personnel and other rural healers. In human emergency a
person was now to turn to the Granth… From this point it was only a short
step to the reconstitution of Sikh sacred space, for if the Granth was such a
powerful device it could hardly be housed in any ordinary or (according to the
Tat Khalsa) polluted space. The centrality of the Sikh gurus and the unrivalled
status of the Granth had been intermittently mulled over in the pre-Singh
Sabha period, though it had never before been on the agenda of any reformers,
and perhaps this marked one of the most significant departures from existing
conventions”.16
The protestant ethic in this drive to sanitize and systematize religious practices,
beliefs and spaces is evident in Oberoi’s account of the reformist movement. Ballantyne
draws upon this precise intersection or shared assumptions of protestant ethic, when he
argues that Sikh reforms should be studied from a longer time, i.e. from 1850-1925 and
with wider milieu in mind, i.e. the writings of Europeans on Sikh practices and identity
coterminous with the Sikh writings on the colonial period as well as colonial officials.
Such a reading, Ballantyne states will allow us to fully appreciate the points of recognition
as well as a deeper understanding of how alliances were built. Drawing upon these studies
as a source on mid to late nineteenth century developments, this dissertation finds
continuities and changes in the SGPC leadership and the organizational makeup. The
16 Harjot Oberoi, ibid, pp. 317-320.
10
SGPC leaders continued the Singh Sabha’s ideals of Sikh practice and thoughts, albeit in a
different historical context, i.e. post- First World War era, but how did these traditions and
institutions evolve in different historical contexts and what was their significance? By
placing the SGPC’s and the broader Sikh communities’ activities in the space of the
gurdwara, we can see the transformations in the SGPC over time.
More specifically SGPC’s origins in 1920 can be alluded to a combination of
events that necessitated the creation of a new leadership to represent political and
religious interests of the Sikh community. One immediate trigger was the events
surrounding the massacre of peacefully-protesting civilians by the British at Jallianwala
Bagh, which was situated less than 50 meters from the Golden Temple gurdwara in
Amritsar. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a devastating blow to the Sikh community,
and the reaction of the gurdwara managers to this event created a furor. The events were
as follows. On 13th April 1919, a large, unarmed congregation had gathered at Jallianwala
Bagh to protest a recently-passed colonial legislation, the Rowlatt Act. This Act extended
indefinitely the emergency measures adopted during the First World War against
revolutionaries, allowing colonial officials to detain Indian subjects for an indefinite
period without trial. The congregation gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh on the day of the
spring festival of Baisakhi were trapped inside the park, which was enclosed by high
walls and had only one exit. General Dyer, blocking that exit, ordered his troops to fire
upon the crowd, resulting in the loss of countless lives.17 The events of 13th April 1919 at
Jallianwala Bagh became a turning point in the history of the national movement in India,
17 Official sources claimed 379 dead and 1100 wounded while the Indian National Congress estimated 1500
wounded and 1000 dead. Savita Narain, The historiography of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 1919;
(New Delhi: Spantech and Lancer, 1998)
11
with an almost universal condemnation of General Dyer’s actions by political and
religious leaders of all stripes. Yet, shortly after the massacre, the mahants and the official
clergy at the Golden Temple in Amritsar conferred the highest respect upon Colonel Dyer
at the Golden Temple by placing a siropa (honorary scarf) on him.18 This enraged the
Sikh community and led to widespread demands for the removal of mahants from
gurdwaras and became a symbolic moment of the waywardness of the mahants.19
Another sphere of activity leading to the emergence of SGPC leadership was the
mounting tensions in the space of the gurdwaras in Punjab and in Delhi. The Rikabganj
affair in Delhi began way back in 1911, when Delhi became the new capital under British
India. Shifting the state apparatus from Calcutta to Delhi meant an increase in the demand
for colonial offices and an area was identified for this purpose – what came to be known
as Lutyen’s Delhi. Gurdwara Rikabganj, a historic gurdwara built in the memory of the
ninth Guru’s martyrdom, happened to be in this area and was identified as a desirable
space for building the new seat of the government by the city planners. A wall on the
southern end of the Gurdwara Rikabganj was razed at the orders of the District
Commissioner. This demolition was a threat to Sikh gurdwaras and Sikhs mobilized to
seek justice under the leadership of Sardul Singh Caveeshar, a well-known Singh Sabha
reformer.20
18 Bipan Chandra etal, India's Struggle for Independence, (Viking 1988); Derek Sayer, "British Reaction to
the Amritsar Massacre 1919–1920", Past & Present, (May 1991), Issue 131, pp 130–164; Savita
Narain, The historiography of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 1919; (New Delhi: Spantech and
Lancer, 1998); Hugh Tinker, "India in the First World War and after”, Journal of Contemporary
History (Sage Publications, October 1968), Volume 3, No. 4. 19 Teja Singh, Gurdwara Reform Movement and the Sikh Awakening, (Desh Sevak Book Agency, 1922). 20 For more information, please see, Harjot Oberoi, “From Gurdwara Rikabganj to the Viceregal Palace: A
Study of Religious Protest”, The Panjab Past and Present, Vol. XIV, Issue I, (April, 1980), pp. 182-
198 and Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Building Histories: The Archival and Affective Lives of Monuments in
Modern Delhi, (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
While the movement was called off in 1914, as recommended by the leaders of
the Chief Khalsa Diwan (CKD was founded in 1902 and was a group of Sikh leaders who
represented the Sikh community in issues of religion, political representation and
education and were largely pro-British), to support Britain in the First World War, the
movement resumed after the end of the war in 1918. The officials made a quick
compromise in 1918, to put an end to this long affair. However, a certain note had been
struck for the community vis-à-vis gurdwara management and preservation. The
recommendation by the CKD was questioned later and their loyalist stand was found to
be unacceptable by the community as a harder line of religious and political leadership
emerged and questioned CKD leaders.
The Rikabganj affair and the Akali movement differ in two significant ways. One,
the Rikabganj affair relied on print media as the principle means to inform and electrify
the masses. The Akali movement, under the leadership of the SGPC, primarily used
gurdwaras to gather a base and occupy them through non-violent methods. For example,
the Akalis gained popularity by organizing the kar seva (cleaning of the water tank) in the
Golden Temple in June 1923 (discussed in Chapter Five).
The second main difference between the Rikabganj affair and the Akali movement
was the socio-economic base of the supporters. While the Rikabganj affair remained
limited to upper-middle-class educated men, the Akali movement had a broader base
within Punjab. Although initially SGPC leadership was drawn from a primarily urban and
educated middle class, over the years there was a sustained change in the leadership’s
constituency to Jats and other agrarian communities. The Sikh Act of 1925 and the
elected nature of SGPC’s formation is one main reason for this diversity, which allowed
13
different communities to elect their leaders as representatives for their concerns.
However, the SGPC continues to remain deeply stratified by caste with a clearly
articulated hierarchy in its organizational structure. As this dissertation will examine,
caste boundaries have never been eroded within the SGPC or the Sikh community at
large, but there are ways in which alliances are made between different caste groups to
create broader claims to power and authority (discussed in Chapter Five on deras).
The final push for gurdwara reforms happened in 1919 in an affair that came to be
known as the Babe-di-Ber affair in Sialkot. The mahant of this gurdwara gave his son the
gurdwara as part of his inheritance. While this was a common practice before, as allowed
by the Dastur al’-amal described above, the precedence set by the Singh Sabha reformers
and the post war context made such practices untenable. As a result, Sikhs in Sialkot
questioned the mahant’s family and protested in the popular press. These cases added up
and created the context for the formation of an Akali group that became the pool from
which the SGPC leadership first emerged.21
On 7th November 1921, the Akalis demanded the keys to the Golden Temple’s
treasury from the mahant. It was then discovered that the Deputy Commissioner had
secretly taken the keys from the mahant of the gurdwara preempting the Akali demand.
Seen as an attack on the Sikh community, this led to widespread protests by the Sikh
community as their representatives were not allowed to hold on to the keys to one of their
foremost institutions of worship.22 The outcome of the “Keys affair” led to the creation of
21 Mohinder Singh, The Akali Struggle: A Retrospect, (Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1988). 22 Mohinder Singh, The Akali Movement, (Manohar, 1978), Opinderjit Kaur Thakar, Sikh Identity: An
Exploration of Groups Among Sikhs, (Ashgate Publications, 2005) and Kashmir Singh, “Shiromani
Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee: An Overview”, ed. Pashaura Singh and Louise, E. Fenech, The
14
a bigger representative body of the SGPC and laid the foundations for its organizational
structure. It was in response to the “Keys affair” at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, when
leaders of the Akali group called upon a general assembly of Sikhs in front of the Akal
Takhat to elect a management body for the gurdwara.23
The British officials tried still other means to stifle the Akali demand. They
preempted the making of a representative body and before an exclusive Akali committee
could be formed, some British officials with the aid of local nobility, like the Maharaja of
Patiala, Bhupinder Singh, created an advisory committee. This committee included Sikh
leaders who were respected by the community and held milder views on gurdwara
management and the role of the British therein. The leaders of this committee included
the likes of Sardar Sunder Singh Majithia, Sunder Singh Ramgarhia and Harbans Singh
Attari and so on, who were known for treading the middle path between the British
officials and hard lined Sikh reformers and leaders.
The committee created under the British officials’ auspices was not well received
by the Akalis, who then demanded the creation of a truer representative Sikh committee.
A committee of 175 members was thus created and was named the Shiromani Gurdwara
Prabandhak Committee or the SGPC. This newly formed committee also incorporated the
36-member committee that was formed earlier under British approval and
encouragement. A smaller body of 72 members was formed within the SGPC that was to
draft new rules and regulations for the administration of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, (OUP, 2014), pp. 328-338, Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State:
Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, (Sage Publications, 2005). 23 The Akal Takhat is considered to be the supreme seat of authority in Sikhism. Literally meaning seat of
authority, it was built by the sixth Guru, Hargobind in the seventeenth century.
15
Scholars writing about the SGPC have seen it as a very powerful institution
because of its elected base and as a political body holding powers akin to the state. For
instance, Mohinder Singh writes:
Since its inception in 1920 the SGPC has been wielding tremendous power
and influence in the Sikh religious affairs. Called a ‘mini-parliament of the
Sikhs’ … an annual budget of nearly 12 crores of rupees, the SGPC provides a
unique model of management of religious places wherein the Sikh
democratically elect their supreme body to look after the management of the
historic Sikh shrines. 24
Yet, a reference to the original Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 shows that the Shiromani
Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee was initially conceived as a federating institution, with
only a supervisory role over the local committees managing the Sikh shrines in exercise
of local autonomy. Originally, only two shrines were to be directly administered by the
Anandpur Sahib. All other shrines, either clubbed together according to the city they were
in or individually, were to be administered by local committees. Similarly, the funds
available for the functioning of the SGPC were to be provided from one-tenth of the
savings of these committees. This situation, with the authority and the resources of a
popularly elected body being severely restricted, generated a desire for expansion,
originally jurisdictional and later functional as well. The committee, described by some as
the “parliament of the Sikhs”, with its executive committee, perceiving itself as the
“religious government,” pursued relentlessly the demand for extension of its direct
authority to cover as many gurdwaras as possible.25 With the amendment of the Sikh Act
24 Mohinder Singh, “Shiroman Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee: Its Origin and Development”, Studies in
Sikhism and Comparative Religion, Volume 5, No. 2, pp. 139-153, (1986). 25 Stanley Tambiah, Levelling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia,
(1997); Harish K. Puri, “Akali Politics: Emerging Compulsions,” Punjab Journal of Politics 5 (Jan.—
June 1981): 33–51; Harish K. Puri, “Religion and Politics in Punjab,” in Religion, State, and Politics
16
in 1945, the local committee of the Golden Temple was abolished and the management of
the whole Golden Temple complex was transferred to direct control of the SGPC. From
then on, this process has continued so unrelentingly that under an ordinance issued by the
Governor of Punjab in November in 1986, even the gurdwaras with an annual income as
low as Rs. 25,000 (less than $2,000 U.S.) were transferred to the direct control of the
SGPC. Exercising direct control over hundreds of gurdwaras now within the present
Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, the SGPC has virtually
transformed them into its field operational centers. In addition to providing direct access
to the funds of all the gurdwaras, this arrangement also placed vast patronage in the hands
of the SGPC by way of recruiting the sevadars (all classes of professional service
providers, ranging from scripture readers to cleaners) in the gurdwaras, thereby giving it
the visible character of a state within a state.
The stakes involved in gurdwara management were always high, as these
institutions collected big donations and, more importantly, wielded significant influence
amongst the Sikh community. The jurisdiction of the newly formed gurdwara committee
in Haryana in 2014, for instance, included eight historic gurdwaras.26 The collections
from these gurdwaras alone were estimated at Rs. 200–300 crores annually, or US$28
million annually.27 The annual budget passed by the SGPC in 2017 was Rs. 1,100 crores,
which was to be spent on education, cultural affairs, religious festivals and events,
in India, ed. Moin Shakir, (1989); Gobinder Singh, Religion and Politics in the Punjab, 1986;
Kashmir Singh, Sikh Gurdwaras Legislation: All India Perspective, (1991). 26 Gurdwara Chhevin and Nauvin Paatshahi at Ghula Cheeka (Kaithal), Neem Sahib (Kaithal), Dasvin
Patshahi (Pehowa), Jheevan Heri (Yamunanagar), Banni Badarpur (Ladwa), and Dodi Sahib
(Taslempur). 27 T. K. Rajalakshmi, “Sikhs vs. Sikhs”, Frontline (August 22, 2014) https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-
Mohan Malviya and K.S. Pannikar’s involvement with the paper in its formative years
had a lasting impact on the Akalis’ methods of protesting and connected the movement to
the larger national cause.
Sardar Sunder Singh Lyallpuri, along with Sardar Sardul Singh Caveeshur and
Sardar Teja Singh Samundri, also played a significant role in the Rikabganj affair. Sunder
Singh Lyallpuri wrote extensively on the matter in The Akali, a Punjabi daily that
influenced colonial officials in making a quick compromise in 1919–1920 regarding the
Gurdwara Rikabganj affair.32 Mangal Singh Gill, then the editor of the newspaper, wrote
to the Chief Commissioner of Delhi. He says, “On our part we make bold to emphatically
remind the government that the Sikhs would no longer tolerate any kind of interference
whatsoever in the religious temples on the part of the government.”33 The leaders of the
Rikabganj affair later influenced the creation of the Akali group and the Akali movement.
Even during the Rikabganj affairs movement, print media was very important in
influencing public opinions and was a singular channel to mobilize the Sikh community.
SGPC’s leadership, in other words, was not a uniform body. There were different
ideas, agendas and commitments amongst the leadership and this is evident in the
decisions made by the SGPC.
Dominant Narratives in Historiography
The structure of the SGPC, along with its functionality and organizational
composition, are distinctive in comparison with other religious management groups in
32 S. Kirpal Singh, Akali Lehir Da Sanchalik, Master Sunder Singh Lyallpuri, (S Kirpal Singh publishers
1972). 33 Quoted in Harjot Oberoi, “From Gurdwara Rikabganj to the Viceregal Palace.”
20
South Asia and beyond. The SGPC emerged in a milieu of socio-religious reform
movements in South Asia (late nineteenth and early twentieth century), a theme that has
received substantial scholarly attention. The issue of religious politics and its legitimacy
has been debated since the Partition of India and Pakistan in numerous forms, chiefly
around debates of communalism, secularism, and separatism/religious nationalism.34
While this dissertation is informed by frameworks of communal identities and discourse,
secularism and its ambiguity in South Asia and separatist/ religious nationalist
movements in South Asia, it contributes specifically to the continuities and changes in the
SGPC’s organizational structure and functions. More recently, scholars like Giorgio
Shani, Gurharpal Singh and Tony Ballantyne have suggested that studies on the Sikh past
are essentially “community-centric” and “internalist” and are not informed by wider
contexts, events or connections with the outside world.35 They suggest either taking a
broader theoretical understanding of terms like “nationalism” to understand Sikh
nationalism in the case of Shani, or broadening the scope of Sikh history in terms of time
and space, i.e. to study Sikh events in longer duration than popularly accepted timeframes
of Singh Sabha movement ranging from 1880-1920 and wider spatial networks between
India and Britain. This dissertation closely follows Balantyne’s suggestion of broadening
the historical scope of study as well as spatial networks but differs in one significant way.
34 Sarjit Singh Bal, Political Parties and Growth of Communalism in Punjab, 1920-47 (Chandigarh, India:
Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 1989); K. N. Panikkar, Communalism in
India: History, Politics and Culture (South Asia Books, 1991); Gopal Singh, Punjab Today (Delhi:
South Asian Publishers, 1987); T. N. Madan, Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Secularism and
Fundamentalism in India (Oxford University Press, 1997); Amalendu De, Religious Fundamentalism
and Secularism in India (Calcutta, 1996); Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and
Muslims in India (University of California Press, 1994); Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social
and Intellectual History, 1890-1950 (Indian University Press, 2008); Anuradha Dingwaney Needham
and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, ed., The Crisis of Secularism in India (Duke University Press, 2007). 35 Giorgio Shani and Gurharpal Singh, “Rethinking Sikh Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century”, Sikh
Formations, 11:3 (2015), pp. 271-282; Tony Ballantyne, Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh
Cultural Formations in an Imperial World, (Duke University Press, 2006).
21
This dissertation also limits the study to the Golden Temple, although it moves to other
gurdwaras as a theme demands further exploration. The study is limited to the study of
one Sikh gurdwara to fully excavate the instances in which the SGPC acted or reacted in a
particular way and left a significant mark on its own structure.
The Akali movement and the SGPC have been the subject of many works that can
be largely categorized into three groups. The first considers the question of whether the
SGPC is inherently political. Prime examples of this scholarship are Gobinder Singh,
Attar Singh, and Paul Brass.36 The second group is loosely concerned with narrating an
event-based history of the Punjab, seeking an understanding of how these events might be
related to each other. The second group sees the events in relation to causality. Examples
of this work are authors Rajiv Kapur, Harnik Deol, and Veena Das.37 The final group of
works seeks to understand the SGPC, the Singh Sabha movement, and the larger
reformist/activist history of the Punjab through a socio-cultural lens. Examples of this
scholarship are Harjot Oberoi, Anne Murphy, and Tony Ballantyne.38 This dissertation is
36 Gobinder Singh, “Pressure Group Politics in Punjab: The Case of the SGPC”, in Political Dynamics and
Crisis in Punjab, ed. Paul Wallace and Surendra Chopra (South Asia Books, 1988); Gobinder Singh,
“Profiles of the SGPC Members: A Study in Socio-Economic Background,” Panjab Past and Present
Politicization of the Sikhs,” in Sikh History and Religion in the Twentieth Century, ed. Joseph T.
O’Conell et al. (Toronto : University of Toronto, Centre for South Asian Studies, 1988): 226–32; Paul
R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge University Press, 1974). 37 Rajiv A. Kapur, “‘Khalistan’: India’s Punjab Problem,” Third World Quarterly 9, no. 4 (October 1987):
1206–1224; Rajiv A. Kapur, “Sikhism and Politics,” Sikh Review 19, no. 213 (August 1971): 38–51;
Rajiv A. Kapur, Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986); Harnik
Deol, Religion and Nationalism in India: The Case of the Punjab (London: Routledge, 2000); Veena
Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (Oxford University
Press, 1995); Robin Jeffery, “Grappling with the Past: Sikh Politicians and the Past,” Pacific Affairs
60 (1987). 38 Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries; Anne Murphy, Materiality of the Past: History
and Representation in Sikh Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Tony Ballantyne,
Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (Duke
University Press, 2006).
22
largely influenced by all these works but straddles a different position on understanding
the SGPC and the ways in which this body maintains its status and power.
Beginning with the first group of studies that seeks to understand the underlying
characteristic of the SGPC as primarily a political body, Gobinder Singh argues that the
SGPC is inherently political. He says:
The reason why the SGPC has been strongly emphasizing Sikh cultural
demands might be to strengthen the socio-cultural solidarity of the Sikh
community vis-à-vis other communal groups in the society. One of the
purposes of this solidarity might be the religious-cultural interests of the
Sikhs. But beneath these grounds it is not difficult to locate the political inter-
connections of these demands. By articulating the cultural demands of the
Sikhs, the SGPC not only seeks to promote the socio-cultural solidarity of the
Sikhs but also enhances certain religious-cultural symbols by focusing on
some ‘crisis’ of the symbols. Incidentally, these are the very same symbols
which also are populistically championed by the SAD (Shiromani Akali
Dal).39
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) was formed at the same time as the SGPC and may
very well be its co-creator. The Akali group formed two wings: one was the SGPC, for
gurdwara management, and the other was SAD, its political part. The two organizations
have separate agendas and functions and they work in conjunction with each other.
Gobinder Singh’s works are based on the SGPC’s own admission of the inseparability of
religion and politics for the Sikh community. Taking examples of the creation of the Akal
Takhat by the sixth Guru, wherein the Guru took on the dual role of spiritual head and
secular authority, SGPC leaders have continuously supported an ambiguity when it comes
to clearly defining its realm of work. However, the two organizations differ in name and
form. Many members of the SGPC eventually have joined the SAD and represented the
Sikh community on the formal political stage. But the SGPC is a religious body for all
39 Gobinder Singh, “Pressure Group Politics in Punjab,” 152; Gobinder Singh, “Profiles of the SGPC
Members.” Emphasis added.
23
forms and purposes. To see this organization as a political body tends to conflate religion
and politics, taking away the nuance of both the terms. We need to understand the SGPC
as primarily a religious body, with aims and agenda to establish its control over
gurdwaras and missionizing role across the globe.
Paul Brass says, “The SGPC has been described as ‘A government within the
government’ of the Punjab and as an alternative to the formal government as a source of
the legitimacy and authority for the Sikh community. It has been argued, in effect, that the
Punjab has a dual political system and a dual political arena, one secular and multi-
communal, the other religious and confined to the Sikhs.”40 This statement overstates the
powers and authority of the SGPC. Even though the SGPC has vast resources available to
it, the body cannot function like the government. This is evident from the joint projects
run by the SGPC and the Punjab State, discussed in the epilogue, which highlights the
SGPC’s need to bolster its own power and authority with the governments.
Notwithstanding the intersections between religion and politics, in the case of the
SGPC and the SAD, the two organizations differ in their functions, objectives and in their
thinking and actions. While the SAD is a Punjab-based political party that aims to win
state elections, the SGPC is still largely governed by the concerns of institutionalization
of the Sikh religion, and desires to manage gurdwaras all over India The two
organizations have supported each other’s agendas at various points in time, but this is
not always the case, as moments of tensions have come to light recently. For instance, in
2008 Jathedar Joginder Vedanti refused to exonerate dera chief Gurmit Singh Ram
Rahim, who was a key ally for the SAD to win Punjab elections. Gurmit Singh Ram
40 Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, 313.
24
Rahim is the head of Sacha Sauda dera and wields an influence over hundreds of
thousands of voters in the Punjab. Having his support in the Punjab elections would have
swayed the votes in favor of the SAD. However, the jathedar of the Golden Temple
refused to cooperate and give the SAD what was needed in the moment. 41 Following this
incident, Jathedar Vedanti’s days were numbered, but in not exonerating the dera chief,
the Jathedar believes he performed his duty.42 While this group of scholarship
understands the SGPC as inherently political, this dissertation understand the SGPC as
more religious than political and attempts to understand how the religious body casts its
influence on political allies and its competitors. The intersection of the two organizations
becomes even more apparent when we look at Punjab’s history in the twentieth century
through an events perspective.
The second group of historiographies connects different events in Punjabi history
and finds continuities as an answer to the power situation in the Punjab. The central
question they are answering is, what caused the rise of Sikh militancy in the 1980s and
1990s and what were the movement’s key attributes? Academic analysis of separatist
concerns has led to a historical search that has tied every political event to separatists’
latter-day demands. For example, Harnik Deol connects the ethno-nationalist demand of
the 1980s to earlier socio-historical roots of increasing consciousness about religion and
community, which took Punjab to be the “natural” homeland of the Sikhs.43 He says that
there was a neat mapping of Sikhism to a well-defined territorial homeland in the Punjab,
especially as the state of Punjab was redrawn on two occasions—in 1947 and then in
41 “Akal Takhat head resigns”, India Today, (5th August, 2008). https://www.indiatoday.in/latest-
headlines/story/akal-Takhat-head-resigns-28003-2008-08-05 42 Personal converstions with Jathedar Vedanti, October 2013. 43 Harnik Deol, Religion and Nationalism in India: The Case of the Punjab (Sage Publications, 2002).
periphery of the gurdwara? This chapter attempts to excavate the objectives and
implications of removing a certain type of historical structure from the periphery of the
gurdwara to allow the SGPC to take ownership of the entire landscape.
The official argument made by the SGPC in razing the bungas was that the number
of pilgrims was increasing to unmanageable levels, making the parikrama (walkway
around the amrit sarovar), which connects precincts at the Golden Temple, crowded and
unsafe. Because of this increase of people visiting the gurdwara, the SGPC brought down
surrounding buildings that were encroaching on the parikrama and built a wider
parikrama.
Chapter Five follows from the previous chapter on the bungas to the concept of the
kar seva—serving with honor and pride for the community’s benefit. In this chapter I
look at the different meanings of the term kar seva and how it evolved from the 1920s to
the 1990s. Tracing the different meanings and implications of the term and the kind of
services included in the religious commitment of the community, I examine the ways in
which sant sampradayas (schools of learnings) , that were discredited under the
Gurdwara Reform Movement and with the foundation of the SGPC, now became part of
the authoritative discourse.
I conclude this dissertation with a brief epilogue on the layered authority of the
SGPC and the SGPC’s interactions with the Punjab State. By looking at the galliara
project, initiated after the 1984 attack on the gurdwara, this conclusion looks at the
different agents in the Punjab that contextualizes the layered authority of the SGPC.
42
Chapter Two: SGPC’s Rise to Power: Institutionalizing Gurdwaras by Routinizing
Functions
Various scholars have highlighted the impact of colonialism on the religious and
social formations in India.1 One such impact of colonial rule was the emergence of
religious reformist movements across India by using new tools introduced by colonial
rule, to disseminate reformist agendas. For instance, using printing presses, religious-
reformists increased the circulation of reformist texts and sacred scriptures, which also
highlighted the issues of variations in sacred scriptures that were earlier written by hand.2
As the SGPC became the representative body of the Sikhs according to the Sikh Act of
1925, one of its agendas was to disseminate a standard understanding of Sikhism and to
this end, the management body took over the publication of the Guru Granth Sahib
(sacred scriptures of the Sikhs). As Tony Ballantyne states, “history writing became a
crucial tool for community leaders who crafted epic poems, polemic pamphlets, and
commentaries on “scripture” in the hope that by clearly defining the community’s past
they would be able to cement their own vision of the community’s present and future”.3
In this event of wanting to publish the sacred scriptures, the SGPC was confronted by pre-
existing printing presses that had established their authority and monopoly within the
1 Partha Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments (Princeton University, 1993); Harjot Oberoi, The
Construction of Religious Boundaries (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Nicholas Dirks, Castes of
Mind (Princeton University Press, 2011); Arjun Appadurai, Worship and Conflict under Colonial
Rule: A South Indian Case (Orient Longman, 1981). 2 N. G. Barrier, Sikhs and their Literature: A Guide to Tracts, Books and Periodicals, 1849–1919
(Manohar, 1970). 3 Tony Ballantyne, Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Fomrations in an Imperial World,
(Duke University Press, 2006), 5
43
Sikh community by publishing the sacred scriptures over fifty years before the SGPC
entered the arena.
The first printing press was introduced in Lahore in the 1850s and moved to
Amritsar in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In Amritsar, the Wazir Hind Press
and Chattar Singh Jeevan Singh became the most popular printing presses within the Sikh
community, with the former taking over socio-religious reformist texts and the latter
printing the Guru Granth Sahib and the rahit maryada. While the SGPC intended to
centralize the publication of religious texts, to educate the larger Sikh public and deliver a
standardized vision of the Sikh past, it was confronted with these pre-existing publishing
houses that had established their reputation amongst the Sikh community.
This example of the printing presses and the scriptural publications highlights a key
conflict in the SGPC’s goal of standardizing and institutionalizing Sikh practices and the
contests it met from within the Sikh community.4 While it is believed that the SGPC had
unanimous support from the Sikh community in the 1920s, this chapter traces the
measures and policies adopted by the SGPC to establish their control over different
domains of Sikh thought, practice, and religious spaces.5 By doing so, the SGPC
established its autonomy over gurdwara maintenance and resources, and by extension of
this, over Sikh practices in the gurdwara space and beyond. This chapter traces the
different ways in which the SGPC institutionalized new practices for the Sikh
community, following the “invention of traditions” under the Singh Sabha reformers.6
4 Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2001), 121–136. 5 Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Sikh Past (Oxford University Press, 2012); Mohinder Singh,
“Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee: Its Origin and Development,” Studies in Sikhism and
Comparitive Religion 5, no. 2 (October 1986): 139–53. 6 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, ed., The Invention of Tradition (CUP, 1983).
44
While the SGPC prevailed as a dominant body, the contests shown in this chapter were
significant in forming the organizational structure of the SGPC. This chapter focuses on
the strategies adopted by the SGPC to establish its authority. From establishing schools
for training the gurdwara dignitaries and officiants, to standardizing building
constructions and materials, the SGPC worked towards centralizing all gurdwara
functions and activities. By doing so, the leaders of the SGPC believed that they were
ending any dilution of their message of Sikhism and creating stronger community ties.
While the Sikh Act of 1925 named the SGPC the official caretakers of gurdwaras,
the definition of the term gurdwara was open to question. Moreover, the question
remained as to which religious spaces would now be considered Sikh gurdwaras and
which would be Hindu thakurdwaras. It was only after the SGPC entered many litigations
over gurdwara properties did the initial number of gurdwaras under its control increase.
Starting with 241 gurdwaras in 1925, the SGPC eventually gained management over 761
gurdwaras in the Punjab over the next 20 years.7 Different claimants to the rights over
gurdwaras alleged their own traditional legal and moral rights to manage these properties.
For instance, the Hindu priests’ association through a series of published pamphlets
recounted historic events that led to Udasi sants (ascetic order started by first Sikh Guru’s
son) coming to manage gurdwaras in the seventeenth century. These pamphlets spoke
about Sikhs being hunted down by the Mughals when Udasi sants managed the gurdwaras
as well as the religious service therein.8 The pujaris challenged the SGPC’s authority over
7 Kashmir Singh, Sikh Gurdwara Legislation: All India Perspective (Singh Bros., 1991). 8 Pujari Association Sri Amritsar, Sri Darbar Sahib ji de sankhep haal (1922).
45
gurdwaras in the 1920s and reminded the SGPC leaders that it was Mata Sundari’s (the
last Living Guru’s wife) wish that the pujaris manage the gurdwaras in perpetuity.
SGPC and Singh Sabha leaders on the other hand claimed that the mahants/
pujaris had been misusing gurdwara funds, and although history was important to them, it
was also time to take ownership of distinctly Sikh practices. Sikh leaders claimed that the
mahants had been amassing the wealth given to gurdwaras as donations for their own
personal expenses. Sodhi Hazara Singh writes that under British rule it was ordained for
“the pujaris to behave well as their forefathers did and not to come drunk to the Temple.
They were not to steal the offerings. They were entitled to their share, so long as they
behaved well, otherwise they were to forfeit it.”9
The ill sentiments towards the pujaris and other Sikh sects were already evident
by the turn of the twentieth century, because of Singh Sabha leaders’ prolific writings
against the newly drawn boundaries between Sikhism and Hinduism.10 Singh Sabha’s
continued disgruntlement with Hindu mahants and pujaris along with the angst from post-
First World War conditions led to open confrontations between the two groups. And it
was the events at Gurdwara Babe-di-Bir in Sialkot that sparked the Gurdwara Reform
Movement and became, according to Sikh scholars, the first event that finally led to the
passing of the Sikh Act of 1925.11
The Udasi mahant at Gurdwara Babe-di-Bir, just before his passing, had left the
gurdwara to his son as an inheritance. This practice, of mahants inheriting gurdwaras as
9 Sodhi Hazara Singh, B.A. (vice-President Shri Guru Singh Sabha), History and Guide to the Golden
Temple (Prakash Singh Publication, 1938). 10 Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries; N. G. Barrier, Sikhs and their Literature; Bhai
Kahn Singh Nabha, Hum Hindu Nahin (Wazir Hind Press, 1898). 11 Mohinder Singh, The Akali Movement (Macmillan, 1978).
46
care-takers, was common even in the 1920s and was not different from other religious
functionaries training their sons to take on future responsibilities; for example, rababis
trained their sons to take their positions when they could no longer perform the duties.
The concept of inheritance was not tied to the notion of personal property as much as it
was to the idea of providing a certain service, which was done in perpetuity within the
same family.
The school for caretakers and mahants was under the Udasi sampradayas
(traditions of learning) until late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These
schools of religious practice were different from those of Khalsa Sikhs, which had
become, very recently in the nineteenth century, the new orthodoxy under the Singh
Sabha reformers and had gathered a wider following. Tat Khalsa and the Singh Sabha
reformers had vilified Udasis and other sant traditions in the last three decades of the
nineteenth century for being deviant from the orthodox traditions and practices.
The SGPC, following on from the Singh Sabha, was re-ordering much of the Sikh
past while creating new standards on how gurdwaras should be managed and what
practices were to be allowed and which were now forbidden. Master Tara Singh, a
popular leader of the Gurdwara Reform Movement, introduced the primary objective of
the SGPC as a body that would “utilize the property and income of the gurdwaras for the
purposes for which they were founded.”12 In creating these new standards and going back
to “the purpose for which they were founded,” the pujari’s practices did not measure well
and became an easy example of how not to manage the gurdwara.
12 Punjab Legislative Council Debates (7th and 8th May 1925), Vol. III, no. 22, p. 1105. Emphasis added.
47
The SGPC was not, however, turning a completely new page. Many of the
practices, functions, and standards that the SGPC officialised were in practice in some
way or form. Many of these seemingly new ideas and practices in gurdwara management
existed before SGPC’s formation; the SGPC merely reinforced certain practices over
others, discarding some and adapting others. By cultivating this new, albeit traditional
manifestation of the gurdwara, the SGPC gradually initiated and established control over
the gurdwara and the community and formalized many practices for the Sikh community.
The significance of these new traditions and their institutionalization is that they became
central to Sikhism since their emergence only a century and a half ago. Introductions to
Sikhism in books and classes associate Sikhism with these core practices and institutions
which were only formalized in the twentieth century, beginning with the Gurdwara
Reform Movement (1920–25).13
The Sikh Act of 1925 marked a turning point for the management of the
gurdwaras and Sikh historical thinking. The Act was created to ensure the preservation of
gurdwaras, their further development, and protection and began a new phase of
institutionalizing gurdwara management. Singh Sabha reformers and the leaders of the
SGPC, who at many times were the same people continuing their reformist agendas, had
similar ideals of Sikhism and formalized these through Sikh practices. This need to
formalize and institutionalize practices and ideas emerged with the advent of colonial
rule, whence Singh Sabha reformers attempted to enumerate, catalogue, and preserve the
past. These new practices and the reconfiguration of the gurdwara were measures to adapt
13 Eleanor Nesbitt, A Very Short Introduction to Sikhism (Oxford University Press, 2016); Vishesh Kumar
Gupta, The Sikhs and the Gurdwara System (Amol Publications, 1998).
48
pre-colonial practices to a different political, socio-cultural, and economic context, while
asserting SGPC’s autonomy in representing the Sikh community, not just in the Punjab,
but globally.
Gurdwara management was always evolving, as noted by scholars like Ganda
Singha, Ian J. Kerr, and Anne Murphy, especially under Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the
early nineteenth century. Although there remain scholarly disagreements on the kinds of
changes and their impact on gurdwara management and the Sikh community, there is
consensus on the evolving nature of gurdwara affairs.14 Gurdwara management was
divided into religious functionaries and non-religious functionaries under Maharaja Ranjit
Singh. The management of the non-religious affairs came into a single individual’s hands,
and Ian J. Kerr mentions the name of Desa Singh Majithia, who in turn left it for his
successor, Sundar Singh Majithia, being the last in line of such management before the
SGPC was formed. The responsibility of this individual was purely in matters of financial
management of the gurdwara property and its associated jagirs (land grant). Other
scholars like Madanjit Kaur argue that no individual managers assumed the control of the
gurdwaras until the advent of colonial rule in the Punjab; rather, groups of Sikhs managed
each gurdwara, and having individual managers was a colonial invention.15
It is evident that the SGPC did not invent posts like the head granthi or head
rababi and inherited this division of duties in the gurdwara. Ganda Singh and Ian J. Kerr
identify different managers and heads for both non-religious and religious activities, like
14 Ganda Singh, ed., Dastur al-amal (1883); Ian J. Kerr, “The British and the Administration of the Golden
Temple in 1859,” Panjab Past and Present 10 (1976); Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Sikh
Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2012). 15 Madanjit Kaur, Golden Temple: Past and Present (GNDU, 1983).
49
grounds keeping, repairs, and security management in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. 16
The head granthi’s office supervised religious affairs and personnel issues, such as
salaries for the rababis (musicians in line of Guru Nanak’s hymns). Other granthis
managed tasks related to religious matters like prayers, training, and management of
people. The rest of the tasks were done on a voluntary seva or ‘service’ basis by deras or
religious schools/groups that were structured on a central guru-chela (teacher-disciple)
relationship. These activities included cleaning the gurdwara, giving tours to visitors,
managing pilgrim lodgings, and preparing langar (free meals for the pilgrims and
devotees). Finally, there was a last segment of workers who helped in the preparation of
karah prashad (ritual offering of sweet foods). This had traditionally been the
responsibility of halwais (sweet shop owners) and shopkeepers in the bazaars around the
Golden Temple, where pilgrims and visitors could buy prashad to donate to the gurdwara,
and the gurdwara purchased a certain amount to distribute to the visitors. These
shopkeepers also accepted money orders to deliver prashad for “absentee pilgrims.” The
SGPC took over these functions in 1926–7 and converted these roles into employable
positions.17 In other words, while offices to handle different functions had been created
long before the SGPC, the management body redefined these roles and created new
offices to control the management of the gurdwara in different and improved ways. But in
redefining these offices and assigning them specific tasks, it was creating a process to
16 Ganda Singh, ed., Dastur al-amal; Ian Kerr, “The British and the Administration of the Golden Temple
bustling markets. It was important for the SGPC to make the experience of entering the
Golden Temple clean, pure, and spiritual, since outside the gurdwara one was exposed to
continual chaos. The Golden Temple had many entrances that led to the inner parikrama.
Karam Singh Historian remarks that there were as many entrances, if not more, as there
were bungas; there were eighty-eight bungas, and each bunga had an entrance into the
parikrama. Additionally, there were narrow alleyways and streets that opened into the
parikrama as well, for example, the narrow street between Akhara Braham Butta and
Ramgarhia Bunga and Bunga Sodiyan and Ghanta Ghar.27 These narrow streets caused
great distress to the SGPC leaders for it was much harder to keep the parikrama clean and
controlled, specifically from animals in these areas. Apart from these narrow entrances
were the four main gates of the Golden Temple—Ghanta Ghar (referencing the Victorian
Clock Tower), Baba Atal, Saraiwala, and Thada Saheb that open out from the parikrama
to the flourishing markets of the walled city, or Katras. The SGPC made plans to close
off the smaller passages and eventually only have the four main entrances.28
27 Karam Singh Historian, Twarikh Amritsar (Sikh History Society, 1936). 28 Amritsar Development Authority, Master Plan of Amritsar, An Introduction, (2016).
58
Figure 10: Street leading to Golden Temple in Amritsar, c. 1857-58. Felice Beato, printed in
Amandeep Madra & Parmjit Singh, ed., The Golden Temple of Amritsar: Reflections of the Past
ate Gurdwara Committee Sri Darbar Sahib de membrane de dhyaan yogi (1936), 5. 31 Sri Darbar Sahib Amrtisar ji de din raat britant, 7th edition (Gurmat Press, Amritsar, 1907); Sri Amrtisar
Professionalizing the Cadres: Driving Accountability and Standardization across
Gurdwaras
The new practices of orderliness and cleanliness were critical to the process of creating an
ideal gurdwara space for believers. This ideal aimed at ordering and defining the sacred
space and assigning meanings to specific areas. But, to maintain this order, a professional
cadre had to be established that would represent the authority and discipline of the newly
created SGPC. This cadre of new professionals represented the SGPC’s inherent objective
towards the Sikh community—to guide and discipline. The management body saw its role
as not just managing the financial matters that the erstwhile non-religious manager of the
Golden Temple upheld. They saw an extension in their responsibilities, which included
the hiring, training, and upkeep of a professional class of people in the gurdwara. This
professional class ranged from the sevadars to rababis and kirtankaris, trades and
positions that were traditionally passed on within families as inheritance. The SGPC
altered this landscape and democratized the professional class in the gurdwara. The
sevadars had to fulfil certain criteria to be hired and were to be trained according to new
rules for managing the gurdwara. The most important shift in this creation of new offices
and duties was to change the role of volunteer work wherein untrained and regular
pilgrims performed duties in the gurdwara as a form of service, also known as seva, into a
salaried job, which required structure, authority, and accountability. It is not that seva as a
concept was done away with in its entirety, but it transformed along with the new
responsibilities of the sevadar, where the person who does seva (seva+dar) was to be
employed. In this way, the management body established an institutional system and
process to manage the gurdwara by introducing a “professional” class to the gurdwara.
63
While voluntary services allowed believers from any caste, creed, or religion to
participate in the gurdwaras, the professional class of sevadars could only be hired if they
were Amritdhari or baptised Sikhs. This meant that the sevadars had to undergo the
baptismal ceremony, if they had not already. The impact of seeing Amritdhari Sikhs
patrolling the gurdwara, guiding and disciplining visitors and pilgrims alike, created a
regimented and stricter view of Sikhism that came to life in practice from Singh Sabha
reformist texts. The SGPC established what the Singh Sabha reformers had been writing
over the last thirty-forty decades. A consequence of sevadars controlling activities in the
parikrama, as discussed in the last section, was the eventual demise of alternative
religious practices that were common in the parikrama until the 1930s, as evident from
the pictures available from the time.32
Figure 12: Udasis and Ascetics Meditating at the Amrit Sarovar in the Golden Temple Complex,
courtesy Punjab Digital Library
32 Amandeep Madra, The Golden Temple of Amritsar: Reflections of the Past; 1808-1959, (Kashi House,
2014).
64
However, it was not just the alternative religious practices and texts that came
under scrutiny. Even Sikh practices and religious readings now had to be ordered, to
ensure proper observation. No scriptures could be read in the parikrama, even if they were
the approved Sikh texts. Scriptures could only be read in designated spaces as the
management claimed that such activity blocked the narrow path for other visitors. The
same applied to sermons. Before the formation of the SGPC, any sant or baba could
sermonize in any part of the gurdwara; after the creation of the professional class, only a
few people were permitted to give sermons, as they were trained in schools. Also, by
employing more granthis (scripture readers) for the increased number of sermons
requested, voluntary agents were no longer needed. Sermons could be given by SGPC
trained pracharaks (preachers) only, and to train them a school was opened in 1927—the
Shaheed Sikh Missionary College.
The Chief Khalsa Diwan began the practice of training pracharaks, kirtanis
(hymn singers), and granthis in specific schools, which continued to receive royal
patronage by the princely states, as was the practice before colonial rule.33 The SGPC
expanded this training and opened the profession of rababis and kirtanis to the masses.
Previously, it had been a hereditary profession, with sons learning from their fathers and
belonging to certain gharanas (method and school of training) of music.34 Virinder Singh
Kalra says, “The advent of modern music education came to the kirtanis in 1927, with the
opening of the Shaheed (martyrs) Sikh Missionary College. This was an institution that
was central to breaking the monopoly the rababis held in imparting musical education
33 Bob van der Linden, “Sikh Sacred Music: Identity, Aesthetics and Historical Change,” Music and Empire
in Britain and India: Identity, Internationalism and Cross-Cultural Communication (Palgrave, 2013),
132. 34 Virinder Singh Kalra, Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach (Bloomsbury, 2015), 88–90.
65
through oral tradition. Sikh reformists founded the college with the express aim of
training people to work in the newly taken-over gurdwaras… These mechanisms serve to
illustrate the extent to which the training of the kirtan musician shifted in the twentieth
century from hereditary to standardized knowledge.”
The SGPC took over the process by opening more colleges, setting a uniform
syllabus, and providing regular funds for training schools and its patrons. The curriculum
for the Shaheed Sikh Missionary College “…offer(ed) accredited courses in Gurmat
Sangeet (religious music), and a certificate was issued upon completion of what is the
equivalent of a degree in music.”35 The students were trained in Sikh history, exegesis,
philosophy, ethics, and practical training in a gurdwara before they were granted a
certificate and then employment in a gurdwara.36 The institutionalization of traditional
roles like rababis, kirtanis, granthis, and pracharaks was a significant move for the
management body, which was exercising a new form of enrolment and employment
policy. These roles had previously been handed down within families, leaving little scope
for the public to get involved other than through voluntary seva. The management body
claimed that such nepotism was only harming the management of the gurdwara and that
the selection needed to be based on merit.37 However, it was not just a requirement for
skilled workers to be trained. It became a requirement for all employees in the gurdwara,
including the sevadars. It was decided that all sevadars had to fulfil certain criteria before
they could be employed, and their duties had to be clearly defined for efficient gurdwara
35 Virinder Singh Kalra, Sacred and Secular Musics. 36 Harbans Singh, Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, (Hemkunt Press, 1998); Kristina Myrvold, “Translating the
Guru’s Words to Local and Global Contests: Katha for Contemporary Sikh Communities,” in Sikh
Diaspora: Theory, Agency and Experience, ed. Michael Hawley (Brill, 2013). 37 “Sevadar Kiven Chune Jan?”, Gurdwara Gazette, August 1929, p.8.
66
management. Various articles in the Khalsa Samachar and the Gurdwara Gazette
mentioned and frowned upon sevadars that were rude and unpleasant to visitors in the
gurdwara. It was believed that the sevadar had to be pleasant but firm attendants, who
guided the visitors and pilgrims but disciplined them when it was needed. For this
purpose, sevadars had to be sufficiently educated; they had to be proficient in reading
Gurmukhi and speaking Punjabi, needed some training in religious scriptures and texts,
and were expected to exhibit a good disposition and have a friendly personality.38
To further control all issues related to religious missionizing, religious
publications, and organizing Sikh events, the SGPC founded a new department called
Dharam Prachar Committee. The roles were now divided between the SGPC and this new
committee which took over all aspects of religious observation, informing and enforcing
the Code of Conduct and religious publications, while the SGPC handled all managerial
affairs of the gurdwaras. The two publications of the departments clearly signalled this
division of labor: the Gurdwara Gazette was run by the SGPC and published monthly
meetings and resolutions, while the Dharam Prachar Committee published Gurmat
Prakash, for the dissemination of Sikh histories, religious sermons, and special issues on
religious observations and events.
The Shaheed Sikh Missionary College was given over to the Dharam Prachar
Committee for management.39 The Missionary College was funded by the SGPC but the
biggest contributor to its funds was voluntary donations made by the community at large.
38 The writer says, “Parikrama vich eh sevadar rakhe jan jo yatri nal narmi, mithat ate piyar nal gal bat karn,
jo koi sawal puche ate hamdardi nal javab de, navakif nun koi gal samajhani hoe ate sabhyata nal
sikhiaye,” in Khalsa Samachar, “Sevadar da charitra,” June 1926, 3; Khalsa Samachar, “Sevadar da
charitra- bhag 2,” September 1926, 2; (December 1926), p. 4.; Gurdwara Gazette, January 1930, 12. 39 Harbans Singh, Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, (Hemkunt Press, 1998).
67
Donations became a prominent way for the community to engage with the projects
undertaken by the SGPC, highlighting the support and consent of the community to
certain projects or plans. Although physical labour in building gurdwaras and charitable
establishments continued to be an important form of performing seva, donating money
became a new form of seva. This became particularly popular amongst the Sikh diaspora,
who chose to send in materials like marble and food for the gurdwaras.40 The SGPC, in
other words, did not do away with the traditional practice of performing seva or
contributing to the gurdwara, but shifted and narrowed the focus of such contributions
while streamlining the official processes of managing, building, and developing gurdwara
properties. Because the SGPC is officially headquartered in the Golden Temple precinct,
it therefore became the first gurdwara to undergo this streamlining and distribution of
professional labour.
In the process of reform, the SGPC assumed direct management of services once
provided by shop owners. Prashad is an obligatory part of visiting a gurdwara. After
offering prayers, all visitors are given prashad before they leave. Visitors can offer
prashad as a form of donation and seva, as mentioned above. There are two ways of
making this donation. Visitors may bring materials for the prashad, namely sugar, wheat,
and oil. Alternatively, they may buy the prashad readymade from the shopkeepers outside
the gurdwara and offer it inside. These shopkeepers held one more very important
function, along with controlling the quality and sale of prashad for the gurdwara. Prashad
shopkeepers traditionally controlled the rest houses and lodging for visitors coming to the
40 In recent times, an online portal asks for bheta or donations as seva on the official website for SGPC,
which is called ‘online seva system.’ For more, see: SGPC, “Send Bheta,” http://new.sgpc.net/send-
bheta/.
68
Golden Temple. They would go to the railway station twice a day, when trains would pull
into the station, and pick up passengers who had come to visit the gurdwara. These
shopkeepers arranged for their lodging, food, and prashad donations, and were generally
responsible for the visitors’ overall experience.41
After the SGPC’s formation, it was believed that the shopkeepers provided poor
standards of prashad and cheated visitors with bad lodging facilities.42 Upon further
investigations, in 1927–1928, the SGPC decided to centralize the prashad facilities, and to
build sarais (rest houses) to provide free accommodation to visitors for up to three
nights.43 These decisions were not well-received by the shopkeepers, as the shopkeepers
would lose their traditional roles, and valuable business. This decision to build rest houses
and to control the prashad service meant that the SGPC was not only attempting to
control the functions and ensure quality within the gurdwara, but also outside it. The
gurdwara management, in other words, expanded outside the walls of the gurdwara. The
shopkeepers lost their right to make prashad and fix the rates for lodges and rest houses,
and they now had to compete harder for visitors. By creating these institutional processes
and departments, the SGPC impacted functions and management outside the gurdwara as
well as the people that had been associated with it, remarkably changing the experience of
visiting the gurdwara.
41 Khalsa Samachar, “Yatruan de Aaram Lai,” May 1932, 8. 42 No Author, Sri Harimandir Sahib de Gunje Bhed: Arthat Darbar Sahib de Intezam Diyan Andruni
Kharabian, (Punjab Commercial Press, 1927). This pamphlet directly accuses halwais for their
corrupt nature. The author says that the halwais had expanded their duties from providing prashad to
also renting properties around the Golden Temple as lodging for the visitors. They thus entrap the
visitors and force them to pay high rents as well as high fees for the prashad, which is also of poor
quality. The author asks the SGPC to build its own rest houses to control the visitors’ experience as
well as to take over the function of halwais. 43 Gurdwara Gazette, Meeting notes, 1928–1936.
69
The new officials and functionaries, along with standardized processes of training,
were successful in placing the resources in the SGPC’s hands. However, as this
dissertation highlights, there were also other institutions under SGPC, but they differed in
certain practices and traditions of Sikhism. Taksals, like the Damdami Taksal, have
played a very important role in Sikh history and politics in the twentieth century.44 More
recently, the Damdami Taksal has become known for its leader, Jarnail Singh
Bhindrawale, and for its role in supporting the separatist movement. However,
traditionally, the taksals were known for producing a professional class of granthis
(readers), ragis (Sikh musicians), and kathakars (exegetes). Additionally, they were
known to have their own traditions in leading kar sevas in the Punjab. In this way,
institutional practices of Sikhism that are approved by the SGPC blend with the deras and
the sant traditions. While some deras do challenge the dominant discourse of a cohesive
Sikh panth that are representative of an orthodox view, many practices and even
professional training of the sevadars are done at these very deras and taksals. Eventually,
a professional cadre of Sikh religious functionaries emerged and became the new standard
for managing gurdwaras. To control the training received in taksals and deras, the SGPC
created uniform syllabi and enforced them through examinations and a rigorous
interviewing process for all job postings. As professional classes became standardized
and democratized, the job listings also had to become more transparent, as stated in
monthly meetings of the SGPC.45
44 Paramjit Singh Judge, “Taksals, Akharas, Nihang Deras,” in Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, ed.
Pashaura Singh and Louis Fenech (Oxford University Press, 2014). 45 Gurdwara Gazette, Monthly meeting minutes, August 1958.
70
Building Projects: Power, Expansion, and Routinization of the New Norms
The routinization of religious and non-religious functions in the gurdwara in their
apposite places necessitated new building projects. For instance, Guru-ka-Bagh (Guru’s
garden) was used for multiple activities like the organization of kathas or sermons based
on historical events, religious fairs, school classes for students in Gurmukhi religious
learning, and special classes for women. However, these activities were no longer
permitted in the garden space as it was considered outside the sacred boundaries of the
gurdwara. This space now became a chosen spot for the new rest house for pilgrims,
which the management found necessary to provide as the halwais, who would also offer
lodging to visitors, were now seen to be corrupt.46 When demarcating areas and assigning
meaning for activities, the SGPC was in effect clearing the space of its precolonial
meanings and associations.
New standards and protocols of being in the gurdwara, the new division of labour
between Dharam Prachar Committee and the SGPC, and new building projects all had the
effect of institutionalizing the genius loci or the spirit of place that was being collectively
yet gradually crafted by the SGPC leaders. This form was not, however pre-decided or
premeditated, but evolved gradually, with each new development and plan impacting the
overall picture. In this sense, no small change or project was insignificant. Every decision
impacted something; for instance, the SGPC assuming the prashad function meant that
new rest houses had to be constructed that would allow pilgrims and visitors to find
lodging without much difficulty.
46 Gurdwara Gazette, Meeting notes of the SGPC, September 1928; Khalsa Samachar, “Updates,” August
1928, 3.
71
The SGPC attempted to create a unified vision of the gurdwara as a sacred place
in its entirety, evident to visitors as soon as they entered the precincts. For this purpose,
many travel guides were published and an official position called the information officer
was created in 1930.47 The Golden Temple, like other historic gurdwaras, comprises
various ‘sacred’ locations associated with different religious events, miracles, and people,
which includes Gurus, bhakts, and soldiers/martyrs.48 These sites continue to be thought
of in a variety of ways, wherein different individuals may consider certain sites to be
more sacred than others. The information officer would guide pilgrims and visitors
coming to the Golden Temple Complex following carefully designed guidelines by SGPC
to express legitimacy. This meant not only observing the conventions of being in a
gurdwara, i.e. to not wear shoes or socks, to dress modestly, and to not carry intoxicants,
but also to not carry big bags and umbrellas into the gurdwara. The information officers
also required a ‘historical’ tour of the religious sites in the gurdwara, beginning with the
Dukh Bhajan Beri because it existed before the water tank was dug or the gurdwara was
built. The circuit then led to the raised platform near Dukh Bhajan Beri, known as the Ath
Sath Teerath, which is believed to be the spot from where Guru Arjan would watch the
work being done on the main sanctum sanctorum. The trail was historically determined,
from the oldest sites to the most recent addition to the gurdwara—the rest house made by
47 Gurdwara Gazette, June 1930. Travel guides are published annually, where the SGPC spends an annual
budget to publish pictures and histories of the gurdwara. For more see,
http://www.goldentemple.org/amritsar-travel-guide,-golden-temple-amritsar-tourist-guide.php 48 For instance, other prominent historic gurdwaras like Anandpur Sahib and Patna Sahib consist of various
sacred sites associated with the memory and historical events from the life of the Guru. Unlike the
Golden Temple, however, these sites have not been ordered within one gurdwara, although attempts
to create circuits and ordering pilgrims to visit gurdwaras in an order have been made by the
management committee. Anne Murphy, Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh
Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
the SGPC in the 1930s outside the Golden Temple Complex.49 The work of the
information officer was made easier in 1956, when more signs explaining the histories of
sacred sites were put up in the gurdwara.50 Around the same time, the Central Sikh
Museum was opened to the public, putting into practice a concern that was deeply
embedded in Sikh ideas of good management and progress, i.e. “historical awareness.”51
In this section, I will consider two building projects that impacted the overall
Golden Temple Complex as well as its management. These transformations in turn
impacted the ways in which the Sikh community came to experience the gurdwara in the
twentieth century. The two projects that I discuss are the building of Guru Ram Das Sarai
and the widening of the parikrama—a project that was forty years in the making. These
projects highlight the ways in which the SGPC managed the gurdwara within and
without, and how a certain sense of place formed regarding the built structure.
While the SGPC worked towards standardizing the look and feel of the gurdwara,
there were location-specific gurdwaras that were incorporated within the larger Golden
Temple Complex. The leadership faced a paradox in its effort to both standardize the look
and feel of the gurdwaras while also maintaining the original structures of the gurdwaras
to their scale, size, and form, especially in larger gurdwara complexes like the Golden
Temple. It was in this conundrum that the SGPC’ s policies took shape, in the
contradictory desires to standardize and yet keep the particularity of the place intact.
49 Sodhi Hazara Singh, A History and Guide to the Golden Temple (Prakash Singh Publication, 1938);
Jagdeep Singh, The Durbar (no pub, 1928). 50 “Aelan”, Gurdwara Gazette, July 1956. 51 I use the term “historical awareness” to suggest that Sikhs at large may not have read various historical
accounts written or endorsed by the SGPC, but they had become historically aware through the
sermons (prachars and kathas) and annual pilgrimage tours of historical gurdwaras. I borrow the term
from Christopher Bayly’s “literacy awareness.”
73
Most conservation scholars on Sikh architecture have highlighted the SGPC’ s
practice of breaking down historically valuable gurdwaras to construct bigger and more
modern structures.52 While this concern is valid, William Glover has recently
demonstrated how older structures were incorporated within newer constructions. Taking
the example of the gurdwara in Keshgarh Sahib, Anandpur, Glover suggests that although
the SGPC has been driven by its concern for bigger and shinier buildings, they have in
some places retained the older structures.53 Similarly, the attempt to shadow the design
and form of the main sanctum sanctorum in the Golden Temple Complex in other
gurdwaras, Glover suggests, signals the desire to make them closer to historical structures
than to modernize these buildings. Following Glover, we can read the streamlining of the
gurdwaras’ functions and responsibilities and the assignment of particular places for
certain activities as not driven merely by concerns of modernity but as deeply conflicted
reactions to the preservation and treatment of historical structures.
Guru Ram Das Sarai was a rest house built by the SGPC in the Golden Temple
Complex. The earliest discussions on the plans for building the Sarai revolved around
issues of the size of the building, its outlook, application of modern facilities like
electricity, sewage, toilets, and library, and the outer façade of the building, which had to
reflect that it was a gurdwara-managed rest house. While some managers felt that the rest
house should be compact and utilitarian with a set number of rooms and storage facility,
others felt that the rest house had to provide for more than just rooms for lodging.54 A call
52 Gurmeet Rai and Kavita Singh, Brick by Sacred Brick: Architectural Projects of Guru Arjan and Guru
Hargobind (Marg Publications, 2003); Patwant Singh, Golden Temple (South Asia Books, 1989). 53 William J. Glover, “Shiny New Buildings: Rebuilding Historic Sikh Gurdwaras in Indian Punjab,”
for blueprints was made to the wider Sikh public in the leading newspapers, asking for
Sikh engineers to keep in mind the community’s needs.55 This call for blueprints
resembles the contemporary tender system, where the SGPC makes a call for architects,
constructors, and engineers to send in plans and designs along with the estimated cost of a
project. The process of choosing architectural and building contractors was first set in the
1930s, when the Guru Ram Das Sarai was constructed. From a pool of blueprints, the
managing committee made several choices for the rest house, deciding upon the aesthetic
and functional experience of staying in a rest house behind the gurdwara. The choice for
the location was significant, because the SGPC had acquired larger tracks of lands and
property to build similar sized or even bigger rest houses elsewhere. The committee found
it important to keep the rest house close to the gurdwara to allow visitors to listen to the
kirtan and sermons through the day.
The experience of being in a distinctive religious rest house began from the
entrance and the outer façade of the building. The use of a dome, big arched windows,
and floral embellishments gave a stylistic feeling of entering a gurdwara and not a rest
house.56 As one entered the rest house, there was a wide and open courtyard, usually full
of activity and noise. But as one proceeded towards the inner area, it was much quieter
and cooler with the use of bricks, light blue and white paint, and covered areas leading to
the rooms and storage area. This style of open courtyard leading to a quiet area is
common to many gurdwaras, especially those that have been rebuilt by the SGPC over
the years. Many gurdwaras from the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries were single-
55 Khalsa Samachar, “Invitations to Design: A Series,” (1929–30). 56 P. S. Arshi has categorized the different plans of gurdwaras and identified the distinctive stylistic features
like pillars, arches, domes, and kiosks. For more, see: P. S. Arshi, Sikh Architecture (Intellectual
Publishing House, 1986).
75
story structures, with a single room for the granthi to perform religious duties while the
congregation met outside this single story, and at times single-roomed, gurdwara.57 Many
such gurdwaras have now been converted into bigger plots of land and bigger structures
with multiple rooms and different functional areas. The rest house followed a similar
pattern and plan for the building, where the outer façade and the inner courtyard gave the
sense of entering a gurdwara. However, the similarities ended there, for the adoption of
modern facilities were made more easily in the rest house than in the main gurdwaras.
The use of electricity remained a controversial subject in the Golden Temple
Complex. The outer area in the gurdwara, mainly the parikrama, received electric lights
and wiring in 1898, after prolonged and controversial arguments between two blocs
within the Sikh community. The mahants and granthis opposed the use of electricity in
the gurdwara, claiming that the gurdwara should be managed in the same way as it was
by the Gurus. Whereas reformed Sikhs, led by Sundar Singh Majithia, insisted that the
gurdwara be managed with the current times in mind that used the advances made in the
fields of scientific invention.58 The inner sanctum sanctorum received electricity in 1931,
around the same time as the rest house.59 Other facilities, such as toilets with modern
equipment like flushes, taps, and a modern sewage system that would take the waste from
the rest house outside the walled city were significant choices in the early 1930s. These
57 Ibid. 58 No Author, Bijili Bidaran. Amritsar (1897); Sant Khalsa Dyal Singh, Sri Darbar-Sahib Amritsar vich
bijli di roshni nal beadbi (Amritsar, 1897); Harbans Singh, “Polemic over the Electrification of the
Golden Temple,” Sikh Courier 8, no. 4 (1976), 21–22. 59 Kartar Singh, History of Golden Temple (Amritsar, 1978).
76
facilities, it seems, were not easily available to the larger masses who could come and
stay at the rest house for free for up to three days.60
Visitor experiences collected through visitors’ books were used to further expand
the rest houses’ facilities and provide for visitors’ comforts, a concern that had become
more pressing in the management body’s affairs. Official posts like that of the
information officer or of sevadars accountable for the comforts of the pilgrims and
visitors alike, both in the gurdwara and the rest house, signal the new management’s
concerns in producing a certain experience of visiting the gurdwara. The creation of this
experience aligned with the expectations of observing a certain decorum in this space, as
discussed before. These experiences were recorded, circulated, and published to further
fuel the development of other SGPC-led projects.
Guru Ram Das Sarai was completed in 1934 with contributions from the
community for building the rest house, and the remaining resources were supplied from
the excess of funds from karah prashad donations in the gurdwara. The future of rest
houses was also drawn up, as the number of pilgrims increased due to annually sponsored
pilgrimages organized by local gurdwara committees and the SGPC.
The plans to widen the parikrama were first made in the early 1930s, when it was
decided that the thirty-foot wide pathway around the amrit sarovar would be widened to a
sixty-foot perimeter. The SGPC argued that there had been an increase in the number of
pilgrims to the Golden Temple which cramped the walkways. The only solution was to
break the uneven structures surrounding the Golden Temple and widen the parikrama.
60 Santokh Singh BSc. SGPC’s, Report Sri Darbar Sahib (SGPC Pub., 1933–34).
77
The demolition of bungas and the clearing of space along the path of smaller gurdwaras
were all part of this project of widening the parikrama, which ended in 1970. In the
process of widening, many sacred spots were highlighted, with their historic and religious
significance receiving renewed reinforcement from the SGPC. Smaller gurdwaras,
included the Shahid Bunga, one of the three that survived and was owned by the SGPC.61
The parikrama, much like other parts of the gurdwara, held significance for the
community and the management body intended to institutionalize this part of the
gurdwara as much as the others. This included building smaller shrines according to a
standardized format of gurdwaras, paving the path and laying marble, setting rules and
schedules for its cleaning, hiring a parikrama officer who oversaw the cleaning and order,
and observing proper decorum and ritualized prayers every morning and evening.
The parikrama holds a deep meaning for the Sikh community and the believers; it
is not simply a pathway around the amrit sarovar. Hence, the SGPC’s control over it is
significant. The parikrama was the place where once had lain the heads of the martyrs
who died defending the Golden Temple on the many occasions it was attacked. It is
believed that the parikrama is in fact a samadhi—a commemoration built for these
martyrs. During my fieldwork, this analogy came up in various unexpected places and
conversations, including a televised show on Sikh prayers. A frequent appeal made to
pilgrims and visitors alike is “walk gently, there are martyrs resting beneath this floor.”62
This idea of becoming a martyr for the honour of the gurdwara is extended to the valour
of soldiers for their regiment and their nation. A common sight in the gurdwara is a
61 The other two bungas were Akal Bunga—also known as Akal Takhat, the seat of temporal authority for
the Sikhs—and Jhanda Bunga. 62 Personal conversations with Balbir Singh, Sevadar (August 12, 2013) and Bibi Jagwinder Kaur
(December 4, 2013), who pointed me to the televised show.
78
marble engraving dedicated to individuals and battalions that have donated money or
marble to commemorate their losses for the cause of the nation.
Figure 13: Marble Memorials in the Golden Temple Complex, taken during field work in 2013
The parikrama unites all these values—defending its sacred spaces against enemies,
courage in the face of death, and masculine notions of standing up for your right—and
embodies them in this physical space. Its institutionalization by the SGPC popularized
and regularized these values and ideas for the entire community. These values of valour,
aspiring to martyrdom for a cause greater than the self, and being commemorated and
decorated on the walls of the parikrama, are tied to the community’s connection with the
gurdwara and its built environment. The spatial ideal that extends from individual to the
built structure is made stronger with such practices and beliefs.
The stories and the values regarding the parikrama can be traced to the written
histories of the Golden Temple, which highlight its unique resilience in the face of enemy
attacks—the Temple was attacked at least seven times by the infamous Afghan invaders
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Ahmad Shah Abdali and Nadir Shah in the eighteenth century.63 Some historical
narratives have suggested that this was already prophesized by the fifth Guru, when a
mason had misplaced the foundation brick. The Guru had then said that there would be a
time when the religion would need to be defended, for this structure would be brought
down and built from the ground up once again. The prophecy included a call for
courageous Sikhs who would lay down their lives to protect the gurdwara and their
religion, which were understood to be the same thing. The valorisation of martyrs,
particularly Baba Dip Singh, in this regard comes from this spatial imagination. And the
legends associated with his death and his samadhi (commemoration building) are tied to
the parikrama in the Golden Temple. This resilience of place in turn depicts the resilience
of the community in the form of the martyrs’ presence in the parikrama.
The project to widen the parikrama was accompanied by plans to pave the path and
lay marble. Previously, only the area in front of the Akal Takhat leading to the main
sanctum sanctorum had been paved with marble using the donations from Ranjit Singh
and his son Sher Singh.64 This marble was sourced from Rajasthan and had traditional
patterns. The new marble laid on the parikrama imitates the patterns in some areas, but it
is largely plain in the rest of the parikrama. The SGPC bought a workshop to make its
own marble in 1934, along the Guru-ka-Bagh and the SGPC office. The gurmat
resolution states the setting of this workshop and explains that the increased orders and
63 There are various fictional and non-fictional accounts on this episode of Sikh history, which deeply
impacts the ways Sikhs view the Golden Temple and tie their own identities and histories to this
place. For more, see Ganda Singh, Ahmad Shah Abdali (Bombay, Asia House, 1959). 64 Madanjit Kaur, The Golden Temple, Past and Present (Guru Nanak Dev University Press,
1983).
80
need for marble for the building activities necessitated the standardization and quality
control of this marble.65
The use of marble has been criticized by architectural conservationists as an
ahistorical material and not the Guru’s aesthetic choice for building materials; the Gurus
largely used Nanakshahi bricks and not marble.66 However, marble carried a certain
symbolism and meaning for people, which the SGPC capitalized on.67 Its meaning was
associated with purity, royalty, and a coolness to the touch, and this meaning was bundled
to create and embody a vision of supreme authority—both spiritual and temporal. An
aesthetic transformation was made possible through a materiality that physically
distinguished the calm spirituality inside the complex from the hustle bustle in the market
area outside.
As the processes and accounting/auditing became better defined and
institutionalized, so did the records and documentation around gurdwara management.
Annual published records highlighted expenses, revenues, and ongoing projects in the
gurdwaras, publishing audit reports, income, expenditure, and savings for future projects.
These records were also organized according to the initiatives taken by the SGPC, such as
building activity, processions, education and so on. Although many records from this time
have not survived, there remain some that reveal how gurdwaras were renovated and
constructed immediately after the SGPC came into existence. Initially, records from
1929–1930 suggest that materials like marble, gold, and other construction materials were
65 Santokh Singh B.Sc., Sri Report Sri Darbar Sahib, (SGPC pub., 1933-34), Gurdwara Gazette, Member
meeting notes, 1934. 66 Gurmeet Rai and Kavita Singh, Brick by Sacred Brick. 67 Webb Keane, “Signs Are Not a Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things,” in
Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
81
donated and supplied by the community as a form of service. The gurdwara management
in Amritsar and elsewhere would take these materials and store them. During building
projects, if such materials fell in short supply, the management would send out an appeal
for the materials or for monetary supplements to complete the task at hand.68
Increasingly, the management committee extended its control over the materials and
opened factories and workshops to centralize the production of materials like marble and
stone work, to ensure that all gurdwaras had standardized inlay work.69 The reproduction
of certain styles and materials gave authenticity and authority to these structures, rather
than emphasize the longevity of the building and the materials used. Questions like
safety, access, and facilities eventually became more important to the management
committee and to the Sikh public in thinking about the old and the new gurdwara
structures, and these were addressed in the design of the gurdwara.
Of the many concerns regarding safety in the 1920s, one was the issue of the danger
the sarovar posed to children and non-swimmers. Newspapers reported multiple incidents
of children drowning in the sarovar because there was nothing to hold on to if someone
slipped into the water.70 The kar seva of the amrit sarovar in 1923 was an opportunity to
make some amends to the structure of the sarovar and add some safety features. Requests
for ideas and design options were sent out in regional newspapers, especially Khalsa
Samachar and Khalsa Advocate. Engineers and architects from the Sikh community were
welcomed to send in their designs and thoughts on how to best make the sarovar safe,
while maintaining the essence of the gurdwara’s design.
A wide variety of ideas came in because of the advertisement. The chief difference
in the design was the structure and materials offered to prevent drowning. One article in
the Khalsa Samachar expanded upon the request for the synchronized materiality of the
design for the sarovar to a bigger but separate issue: that of the Victorian Clock Tower.
The writer says, “The Victorian clock tower... imposed itself on the Golden Temple since
early 1870s. What we need now is an understanding of an ‘oriental design’ and how to
maintain this ‘oriental essence’ of the Golden Temple that had already been compromised
with the Victorian clock tower.”71 This Clock Tower had been built in the 1870s, after the
Revolt of 1857, by demolishing Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Bunga. In this, it served as a
marker of British authority over the Punjab.72 The proximity of this structure to the
Golden Temple was not lost on the Sikh community, which had strongly opposed this
structure until it was demolished in 1947–1948. The Gothic design was an “eyesore” not
just to the Sikh public, but to the European and British officers who visited the site as
well. The colors of the Victorian Clock Tower were dark in direct contrast to the Golden
Temple, as the article highlighted, and their aesthetics expressed two starkly different
worldviews. The writer appealed to the better judgment of the SGPC and the community,
and the author asked for designs and building models that could be displayed at the
gurdwara before a decision could be made. The jangla, or the railing for the sarovar, was
built after such a building model was placed in the SGPC office and a certain period had
passed during which anybody could register complaints about the building plans.73
71 Ibid.; Khalsa Samachar, “Ik Namuna Purabi Sundarta da,” editorial article, May 1923, 5. 72 B. H. Baden Powell, Handbook of the Manufactures and Arts of the Punjab, vol. II (Lahore, Punjab
Feinting Company, 1872). 73 Khalsa Samachar, “Ik Namuna Purabi Sundarta da”, June 22, 1922, 5; and “Jangla kiven banen?” Khalsa
Samachar, June 7, 1923, 2.
83
Competing Ideas of Building Projects: Objecting to SGPC’s Narrative
There are three bers or trees in the Golden Temple complex. These three sites are the
Illachi ber, Dukh Bhajani and Baba Budha’s ber tree. These three sites are highly revered
by pilgrims for their sacred and miraculous powers. Dukh Bhajani, literally translated as
the ‘end of miseries’, is believed to have magical powers. Legends state that this place is
blessed to cure medical issues, especially related to leprosy as a leper was cured here
when he accidentally fell in the water in the sixteenth century. Since then, the Guru
blessed the water around the tree to cure all illnesses as well as end the miseries of
believers who come to pray here.
Harjot Oberoi has pointed out that the worship of trees, particularly the pipal tree
was a common practice in the pre-colonial period and was part of an “enchanted
universe”. He says, “The pipal (Ficus religiosa) and the bar (Bengalensis) trees were
commonly venerated, and only under dire circumstances like famine were their leaves cut
to feed the cattle…”.74 In other words, worshiping trees and plants was part of the
enchanted universe and were given as high a rank as any Gurus, scriptures or sants. This
practice of worshipping plants and trees, Oberoi says, came under attack under the Singh
Sabha reforms and were eventually discarded by the community as the Guru, Granth and
Gurdwara became the only sites of belief for them. The continued support for the Dukh
bhajini amongst the Sikh community however suggests the exception to this rule of the
three G’s and the support of the community in maintaining the ber tree in the Golden
Temple. The example of the Dukh bhajini ber highlights similar efforts made by the
74 Harjot Oberoi, Construction of Reliigous Boundaries, p. 169.
84
SGPC to do away with the worship of trees and the continued support given to the tree by
the community, in defiance of what the SGPC desired.
At the beginning of the twentieth century there was nothing here but a tree along the
parikrama (pathway around the amrit sarovar).75 Sometime in the 1930s, the SGPC
floated the thought to demolish this small structure to expand the parikrama. The Sikh
public questioned the rationale behind the demolition of older gurdwaras and memorials
for new projects like parikrama expansion.76 The SGPC claimed that the narrow
parikrama and the bottlenecks around various entries and structures prevented the easy
transit of an ever-increasing volume of pilgrims. Such plans lent themselves to further
conversations over which structures to keep in the Golden Temple and which ones to be
removed. While certain structures did not raise much concern, like when the shivling
(Lord Shiva’s symbolic presence)77 placed on a raised platform in the parikrama suddenly
disappeared, there were debates on other structures that held greater value for the Sikhs.
In an article entitled, “Should gurdwaras be Built or Demolished in the Golden Temple”
in the Khalsa Samachar,78 an anonymous author highlighted the risks involved in
widening the parikrama at the expense of Sikh heritage and losing out on useful and
functional spaces to make the path wider. The writer asks what would be the purpose of
coming to a site that no longer had the sacred and memorial elements that were so deeply
tied to the Sikh past and faith? The writer claimed that he had it on good authority that
75 There are pictures that attest to the simplicity of the spot in the early twentieth century. For more, see:
Amandeep Singh Madra and Parmjit Singh, ed., The Golden Temple of Amritsar: Reflections of the
Past, 1808–1959 (Kashi House, 2014). 76 Khalsa Samachar, “Sri Darbar Sahib ji di Parikrama vich Gurdware Dhae Jan ya Banae Jaan?” February
11, 1932, 8. 77 Khalsa Samachar, “Sri Darbar Sahib di Parikrama vich Ek Ascharaj Ghatna,” April 19, 1923, 2. 78 Khalsa Samachar, “Sri Darbar Sahib ji di Parikrama vich Gurdware Dhae Jan ya Banae Jaan?”
85
Gurdwara Dukh Bhajani and Ath Sath Teerath (mentioned above), two prominent sites
for the Sikh community, were to be demolished for the widening of the parikrama.
The demolition of these two structures would be unimaginable as they held vast
influence among the believers who came to these sites for special darshan (to be in the
presence of the divine). These voices of dissent questioned the hasty decisions to
demolish the existing structures and instead suggested ways to reinforce and rebuild the
old structures to maintain the heritage of the community. Both the Dukh Bhajani and Ath
Sath Teerath have therefore been renovated over the years under the stewardship of the
kar seva sants.
By the 1940s, the site had received a lot more attention in an increased number of
books and pamphlets highlighting its history and its attachment to the fourth and the fifth
Guru. Eventually, a Gurdwara Gazette report in 1942 stated that plans to construct a
small gurdwara to receive the increased number of pilgrims who wished to take a dip and
to do akhand path (continuous reading of scriptures for forty-eight hours) here.79 As a
result of the increased attention and focus on the gurdwara and an even higher number of
followers coming for a dip, an enclosed space for women was also constructed to allow
them access to the waters of Dukh Bhajan Beri, along with an expanded structure and
support for the tree. In other words, an increase in published representations had a very
tangible outcome on the built structure. The SGPC averted a scandal by ceding to the
community’s demands and building a structure in a place recognized to have miraculous
powers by the community at large.
79 “Aelan”, Gurdwara Gazette, July 1942, 21.
86
By the 1970s, it was found that the Dukh Bhajani tree had weakened considerably
despite efforts to support and conserve it and the SGPC had to act to ensure that the
community was not irked. The roots had been impacted because of the widening of the
parikrama and the laying of marble, a project that was begun in the1940s and ended in the
1970s. The roots, which earlier had enough ground to spread and grow, were now
severely restricted by the buildings. The tree had to be saved from these constructions.
Although the SGPC made plans to conserve the built structures and the significant trees
around the gurdwara, some of the practices that ensued were more complex than they had
envisioned. These became learning exercises for the management body, which started
creating processes to prevent past mistakes, forming institutional memory as well as
stronger institutional preservation practices.
Figure 14: New Structure of Gurdwara Dukh Bhajani Beri in 2014
87
Various projects have been undertaken since the 1970s to protect the Dukh
Bhanjani Beri because of its historic and religious status for the Sikhs. Many conservation
architects have been hired to devise plans to protect this site. Most recently, in 2011 a
project to clone the tree was undertaken by D.S. Jaspal. A graft of the tree was planted in
a heritage garden in Chandigarh, thereby saving this sacred tree for the Sikhs in a freer
and uninhibited environment.80
A hierarchy of sorts emerged in terms of the gurdwaras or spots deemed the most
sacred and historically meaningful to the community. As demolitions and renovations of
gurdwaras gathered speed, so did the contribution of the community in directly engaging
with such projects. The emergent process on how the community could contribute to this
increased and intensified building activity became critical as the activities raised
questions of what was historically important to the Sikh community.
In the 1920s, the community was also engaged over the status of the samadhis,
tombs for the martyred soldiers who had lost their lives while protecting the gurdwara in
the last few centuries. The samadhis under consideration were those of Sardar Gurbaksh
Singh and Baba Deep Singh. While the Shahid Bunga is an important memorial site that
continues to exist, it is only one of the many samadhis that had once been in the
gurdwara.81 Bringing these samadhis down in the late 1920s posed a threat to the memory
of these warriors and was a purposeful choice in the vision of the gurdwara and Sikhism
at large.
80 Chandigarh Nature and Health Society, “Museum of Trees: Sacred Gardens,”
http://www.museumoftrees.org/sacred_garden.php (accessed November 19, 2018). 81 Khalsa Samachar, “Baba Atal ji ate Samadhan,” May 3, 1923, 2.
The SGPC made a conscious move to make Sikhism less aggressive and haunted by
the memories of the sant sipahis (literally “saint-soldiers,” or Sikhs who had fought for
the community) who fought these battles—a vision that the Nihangis still maintain.
However, memories of certain critical figures were sustained, for example Baba Deep
Singh. Other martyrs were revered in other gurdwaras outside the Golden Temple.
Destroying physical embodiments of the values essential to the community that were even
more recent in the minds of the community because of print culture, created an
environment where Sikhs expressed their discontent and disagreement with the plans.
By examining editorial articles, we can piece together these conversations, which
expressed the opinions that then informed the plans and processes to preserve the Sikh
past in the form of monuments and memorials. On the issue of the samadhis, one of the
op-ed articles argued that it was understandable that the management body needed to
cater to the increasing number of pilgrims at the Golden Temple and that the conditions
there were getting out of hand. However, an alternative solution to this problem would be
to create even bigger samadhis in an area not far from the original samadhi. This article
ends with five recommendations on this specific issue of memorials for sant sipahi. First,
no more samadhis should be removed from their original location. But also, no samadhis
should be worshipped. Instead, they should be treated as important memorials. Second,
the names of all martyrs should be engraved on stones and placed in the Golden Temple.
Third, a big hall or memorial like Westminster Abbey should be constructed that would
serve as a reminder of the martyrs. Additionally, historical works should be written, and a
library should be created that would hold the references for the Sikh past. Fourth, the
committee should ensure that no one ever dares to demolish important Sikh structures
89
again. Finally, the committee should commit to protecting the structures that remained in
the parikrama.82 In other words, built structures and projects were not just directed by the
SGPC but were also informed by the community at large. The community participated in
these conversations through select media and participated in the building activities by
making contributions towards the building materials and building activities. The
typographies of Sikh gurdwaras, as studied and recorded by Pradeep Singh Arshi, came to
life in this period, when the typical square and rectangular gurdwaras were built along
with the archetypical domes and jharokhas (overhanging enclosed balcony), reminiscent
of the Golden Temple.83
In this chapter, I have looked at the professionalization of the SGPC—its offices,
managers and workers and the institutionalization of gurdwara management in tandem
with building/ construction activities. By looking at the three aspects in relation to each
other, I argue that the SGPC was not merely innovating on a modern sense of Sikhism or
summarily taking on projects as problems seemed to occur. On the contrary, these
representations speak of a larger vision, to preserve the past and create a new sense of
being Sikh according to the rahit maryadas that the Singh Sabha and the SGPC leaders
agreed upon. The SGPC and its attendant officers gained legitimacy by creating
standardized and accountable systems and records. Finally, despite SGPC’s efforts to
control all functions and the ways in which people visited the gurdwara, this proved to be
difficult to control. The Golden Temple had various associations in relation to specific
places for different people, and to rebuild or renew those areas required a larger vision
82 Khalsa Samachar, “Baba Atal ji ate Samadhan.” 83 P. S. Arshi, Sikh Architecture; William Glover, “Shiny New Buildings: Rebuilding Historic Sikh
Gurdwaras in Indian Punjab,” Future Anterior 9, no. 1 (Summer, 2012).
90
that would have to convince most, if not all, Sikhs. In executing this vision, the SGPC
also acquired authority and autonomy in making decisions for the built structures as well
as the management of these places.
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Chapter Three: Discovering Our Roots—Performance, Pilgrimage, and Locating
Histories
It was common convention among Sikhs in the countryside, alongside
Hindus and Muslims, to frequent khanaqahs (major shrines of Muslim
pirs), pirkhanas (minor shrines of Muslim pirs), jatheras (cremation
sites of village ancestors), mazars (Muslim tombs), kabars (graves)
and samadhis (tombs associated with Sikh and Hindu holy men).
These visits were undertaken to heal illness, procure a son, cure the
cattle of disease, and quite often make propitiatory village rites. The
ancestral shrines located on the boundaries of Punjab villages were
seen to protect them from malignant spirits and other evil forces.1
Harjot Oberoi’s study of the pre-colonial “enchanted universe” highlights multiple
pilgrimage sites visited by the Punjabi community before the Sikh reformist movement in
1880s. These communities included Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims who visited the shrines
as per their needs. For example, a tomb known to cure an illness would be visited for that
specific purpose, regardless of the persons’ subscription to a religious community or
identity. In other words, pilgrimages were done based on individual needs for wishes and
desires and not determined by one’s religious faith. This, Oberoi explains, changed in
1880 with the Singh Sabha reformist movement, when a “powerful campaign for Sikh
withdrawal from popular religion” was launched. Oberoi says, “The entire project of
modern Sikhism—which entailed scripture as a channel of communication between man
and God, the reordering of sacred space and pilgrimage destinations, a new religious
1 Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh
Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1994), 198.
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calendar (negating agrarian rhythms and their accompanying celebrations), the
disciplining of the body, the purging of the ludic, the cultivation of a Protestant ethic and
its attendant rationality.”2 The ordering of pilgrimages was one such form through which
this new Sikh identity was created and sustained.
The Singh Sabha reformers ran a successful campaign in eliminating “popular
religious” sites like the tombs of saints and religious sites associated with other
communities, with concerted efforts to demonize shared and popular places of worship.
While it is difficult to capture the exact success of this campaign, and we know that
community members continued to visit other shrines,3 gurdwaras became central to
religious practice. Following from the Singh Sabha reform movement, the SGPC also
captured the imagination of many Sikhs, who believed that gurdwaras had to be
maintained in specific ways, as discussed in chapter two. From appointing the officials to
secure and organize the gurdwaras’ routine functions, to using certain construction
materials to standardize gurdwaras iconic representations, the SGPC ordered the
gurdwaras in a particular format. Pilgrimage groups were organized to further ensure that
the SGPC defined order and standard was maintained in all the gurdwaras, regardless of
their location or size. This chapter explores such organized pilgrimages that took the
SGPC’s influence to distant gurdwaras and enabled SGPC’s vision of Sikhism to flourish
in these locations.
The SGPC was formally and legally recognized as the Sikh representative body
after the Gurdwara Reform Movement in 1920-1925. The immediate consequence of this
2 Ibid., p.141. 3 Anna Bigelow, Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim North India (Oxford University Press,
2010).
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law was the creation of a gurdwara management committee that would form the apex and
would have several smaller local management committees in the gurdwaras. The apex
committee was meant to be a federating institution, wherein the local committees would
report to the larger/ central body on the affairs annually. However, the central body
gained more authority and power over time, thereby standardizing gurdwara functions,
form and practices. While the local gurdwara committees organized annual pilgrimages to
various gurdwaras closer to them, the SGPC took over the organization of pilgrimages
when the scale was bigger, for example, pilgrimages to gurdwaras in Pakistan. One
distinction this chapter makes in studying pilgrimages is that it recognizes the historicity
of pilgrimages and contextualizes the pilgrimages in their specific moment and with their
specific objectives. These exploratory and collective pilgrimages served specific
historical moments in which they were organized while impacting the concept of
pilgrimage at large for the Sikh community. For example, when the first all-India
pilgrimage was organized in 1930, the SGPC was establishing its authority over
gurdwaras all over India. This pilgrimage helped establish the committee’s authority if
not direct control over the gurdwaras outside the Punjab.
Pilgrimages are important events, especially when they are organized by the
management body and studying these events allows us insights into the institutions’
objectives, concerns and challenges. For example, the first mass pilgrimage to the Golden
Temple was organized by the SGPC in the 1920s, when it was gaining wider popularity.
This pilgrimage led to the first kar seva (cleaning the silt from the water tank in the
gurdwara) in 1923, when thousands of Sikhs flocked to Amritsar to participate in this
service. This event is discussed in greater detail in the next chapter and sheds light on the
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impact of pre-colonial Sikh lineages and sants on the SGPC. While the next chapter
highlights the continuities between the pre-colonial practices and the current practices,
this chapter highlights the transformations of pre-colonial Sikh religious practices under
the SGPC. A study of pilgrimages allows us such an opportunity.
Harjot Oberoi writes that pilgrimages were common practice amongst the different
communities in the Punjab. However, these communities were not restricted to visit
pilgrimages associated with any one religious tradition but had a shared milieu in which
they would visit the deity associated with the problem. This changed under the Singh
Sabha where religious pilgrimages increased in numbers and were also specific to
religious identities. For instance, Sikhs would now only go to pilgrimages associated with
Sikh Gurus and martyrs. The motivation to visit gurdwaras also increased as more
historical narratives about these gurdwaras became easily available.4 While visiting local
gurdwaras was good on a regular basis, it also became important to go on pilgrimages that
were historically significant. One had to make pilgrimages to sites associated with
historical events in the Sikh past. This was further enabled by increased mobility under
colonial rule, as access to trains and roadways improved.
Under the formative years of the SGPC, between 1925- 1940s, pilgrimages had two
main purposes. One was to explore and locate the specific places where the gurdwaras
should have been, according to recorded historical works on the Sikh past. Pilgrimages
became first an exercise in locating gurdwaras and secondly, in building gurdwaras,
where building activities now became part of the kar sevas (community service which
4 Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Past (Oxford University Press, 2012), 170–179.
95
broadened from cleansing the water tank in 1923 to building gurdwaras through
community service), as discussed in the next chapter. Thus, pilgrimages took on a distinct
meaning and were organized on a new scale and frequency to discover and build these
gurdwaras. There was a need to “upgrade” the gurdwaras, especially such gurdwaras that
were historically important, like the Chevin Patshahi’s (6th Gurus) gurdwara in Gwalior,
discussed further. The importance of pilgrimages was further in disciplining individual
behaviour and practices. By standardizing rituals in all gurdwaras, particularly by
encouraging pilgrims to report on deviant behaviour, the SGPC streamlined Sikh
practices.
Sikh sermons or prachars are full of historical and legendary tales of courage and
heroism, where acts of valour are tied to physical places. One criterion for proclaiming a
place to be a Sikh gurdwara amongst others, according to the Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925,
was the occurrence of a significant historical event associated with Sikh history or a Sikh
Guru in that place.5 Following the passing of this Act, efforts were made to claim various
places as Sikh gurdwaras and increased efforts were made in searching for physical
grounds where Sikh historical and legendary events were believed to have taken place.
The pilgrimages at this time were organized around such motives of discovering the
places attached to legends. These pilgrimages were followed by extensive publicity,
where reports on the journey and the discovery of these sites were published for the larger
Sikh community.6 These written materials were sold at the local gurdwaras and at times
given out for free. The pamphlets and newsletters aimed to publicize the efforts and the
5 Sikh Gurdwara Act, 1925, Section II, Punjab Legislative Department. 6 Hindustan de prasidh gurdwarian di yatra di hazuri special gaddi di report lekhak: Sarab hind gurteerath
yatra di publicity sub-committee sodhik (Lahore, 1930).
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successes of the local gurdwara committee and to circulate the official histories of the
gurdwaras that had been visited. Sometimes this literature was followed by appeals for
resources as kar seva—both monetary donations and donations of physical strength and
skills from people to help build gurdwaras at these historical sites. In other words, the
making (and sometimes the repairs) of gurdwaras, and even the knowledge of their
existence at times, were made after the pilgrimages had been organized by the local
gurdwaras. Efforts were made to familiarize the Sikh community with the places and
names mentioned in the janamsakhis (hagiographies on the lives of the Gurus) and
gurubani (verses of the Guru) in the Adi Granth. For instance, Master Mehtab Singh’s
Navan ate Thavan da Mahankosh, an encyclopaedia of the names and places in the
gurubani, informed the public, particularly the sangat (Sikh community of believers),
about the gurdwaras—the events they were associated with and the person that had
performed a miraculous event in this place, whether Guru, sant (saint) or sant sipahi
(saint-soldier). The sangat may have heard of these places in different ways, but an
encyclopaedia on the names and places made this information easily available in one
place.7
This chapter looks at how the process of pilgrimage led to a rethinking of historical
gurdwaras, beginning with a search for some gurdwaras and construction or repair of
others. It seeks to understand how pilgrimages become the focal point of social, cultural,
and political action and looks to historicise the pilgrimages, especially when new
practices were initiated. Scholarly works on pilgrimages seem to understand these events
7 Master Mehtab Singh, Navan ate Thavan da Mahankosh (1933) republished (Amritsar, Singh Bros.,
1991).
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as fully formed and unchanging events. Ritualistic studies on pilgrimages assume these
sites to be fully formed in the minds of the believers, who tend to be the subjects of such
studies.8 By focusing on the sites for pilgrimages and the act of organizing them, we can
uncover the historical circumstances and implications of institutional support to select
spaces. This allows us to understand how certain pilgrimage sites become more important
over others. In other words, pilgrimage sites are not natural sites that pre-exist in the
minds of the believers but are historical places that came to be managed by someone at
some point of time. Even when historians have studied the changes in the management
and religious practices of sacred places, they have implicitly accepted the locations’
sacred character for the pilgrims and for themselves alike.9 However, pilgrimages and
these sacred sites do change over time, in form and in meaning, as newer stories emerge,
and myths are created. They undergo various material and non-material transformations,
and one way to examine this transformation is by paying attention to how their (official)
histories are imagined and portrayed. These histories are further tied to their material
make-up.
By focusing on pilgrimages, it will become clear that communities or socio-
cultural groups are not just maintained by common pasts or experiences in the present,
but, more importantly, by working towards a collective future that has a semblance of
structure and standardization. It is not just the shared past, which is important in binding
the group to a common origin story but in working together in the vision for the future. It
is for this reason that exploring and discovering the roots for gurdwaras was just the first
8 Ann Grodzins Gold, Fruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims (University of California Press,
1987). 9 Ishita Banerjee-Dube, Divine Affairs: Religion, Pilgrimage and the State in Colonial and Postcolonial
India, (IIAS, 2001).
98
step, but in building these sites with magnificent gurdwaras, a stronger bond was built.
The SGPC gained authority through such activities, which germinated from pilgrimages.
These pilgrimages were also very important in disciplining practices and bodies through
rituals acts that were carried through pilgrimages to other centres of Sikhism.
Explorations: Discovering Our Roots
The Panj Takhat train run by the Indian Railways courses through India, starting from
Amritsar making its way to Anandpur and Bhatinda in the Punjab, Patna in Bihar, and
Nanded in Maharashtra. Picking up passengers throughout the length of its journey, the
train route offers pilgrims a chance to visit and offer their prayers to the five seats of Sikh
authority, called Takhats, that hold special significance for the Sikh community. This
pilgrimage route is a shorter version of an earlier pilgrimage that began in 1930 from
Lahore. Pronouncing itself to be the first ever “Annual All-India Gurdwara Pilgrimage,”
the organizers had planned a pilgrimage journey starting from Lahore to Calcutta in the
east and from Delhi to Nanded in the south. This annual pilgrimage tour had enlisted the
Railways to organize the pilgrimage for the first time, changing the very nature of
pilgrimages in the process by reaching further distances in short amounts of time and
being able to cater to many Sikh congregates together.
The first all-India gurdwara pilgrimage was organized in the year 1930, starting
from Lahore and moving towards Delhi. This pilgrimage took its inspiration from smaller
pilgrimages that were organized by local gurdwaras in different regions. Harjot Oberoi
mentions that the ritual of traveling together in small groups to pilgrimages was a pre-
colonial practice. It is possible that this practice continued under the SGPC but was
formalized with structure and resources. One reason behind the collective pilgrimages
99
organized by the SGPC was to ‘discover’ the places that Sikh history was associated with,
now commonly found in historical texts and pamphlets that were readily available to the
Sikh masses. It was these sites that the SGPC had fought so hard to gain rights to in the
Gurdwara tribunals, therefore it made sense to now physically identify what were
notional Sikh historical sites. The sangat may have heard of some gurdwaras and known
their significance in Sikh history, but were unlikely to have traveled to these places.
What started as a weekend group exercise during the Gurdwara Reform Movement,
where small groups of the sangat would travel to gurdwaras in the vicinity (within the
districts), finally expanded into longer pilgrimage trips to greater distances (much longer
distances that required either road travel or railway travel). The sangat at a local gurdwara
would plan the sites to be visited in advance, inform the gurdwara managers that they
would be coming as pilgrims, and collect funds to make the journey. The rules for
participating and being in the group evolved over time as the scale of these journeys
expanded. For example, Bhai Teja Singh, the head granthi (reader of sacred scriptures) at
Dehra Sahib in Lahore, organized the sangat to visit gurdwaras, stating that the purpose of
these journeys was “to make explicit the place of the gurdwara in every Sikh’s life,” and
that “gurdwaras are at the center of every Sikhs’ principles, thoughts, reforms and
liberation.”10 Note, the author does not suggest that pilgrimages allow Sikhs to relieve
their pains or seek cures, but that they are centered in their lives and purpose by visiting
the gurdwara. This is a significant shift in the meaning and purpose of making
pilgrimages in the twentieth century.
10 No author, Gurteeerath darshan ate hazuri yatra sambandhi zaruri benati prakashak sarb hind guru
teerath yatra committee Lahore (Lahore, 1930).
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These smaller pilgrimages gave way to the formation of a bigger body called the
Sarb-Hind Gurteerath Yatra Committee, or All-India Gurteerath Pilgrimage Committee,
in 1927. This body had three divisions. The first was the committee’s core that decided on
organizational matters. These included communicating and planning with the North-
western Railways department in organizing a special train that would carry the pilgrims
on the planned route, assigning a coach to the Guru Granth Sahib, and making any
necessary arrangements concerning the railways, like organizing food etc. They also
planned where pilgrims would meet, how many pilgrims could be taken, and other day-
to-day affairs. The second division was the publicity department, which handled the
advertisements for the pilgrimage, letters and publication of books, information guides
and rulebooks for future pilgrimages, and accounts of previous pilgrimages.11 The third
division, the treasury, handled the expenses and accounts for organizing the pilgrimage
and its publicity. At the end of the pilgrimage an audit report was filed, and at times
published as well. It was an enormous undertaking that required much planning and
organization by a committee of influential people.
Beginning in Lahore, this pilgrimage went to places like Amritsar, Anandpur,
Delhi, Patna, Calcutta, Gwalior, Bombay, Nanded, etc. The pilgrimage lasted about a
month and a half and carried seven hundred people on the train, although they had set out
to organize for five hundred people.12 Although touching upon all the well-known and
11 No author, Gurteeerath darshan ate hazuri yatra sambandhi zaruri benati prakashak sarb hind guru
teerath yatra committee Lahore (Lahoure, 1930). A shorter version on the 1930 pilgrimage trip. Secy
Sardar Arur Singh ji Taeb journalist and owner of Heera Company Lahore. 12 “There were some young men from opposition parties that continuously gave trouble in the yatra affairs,
who only apologized in the end of the yatra, but throughout the time they continuously misbehaved
and challenged plans.” Hindustan de prasidh gurdwarian di yatra di hazuri special gaddi di report
lekhak: sarab hind gurteerath yatra di publicity sub-committee sodhik (Lahore, 1930), 9.
101
perhaps well-travelled-to places, its aim was to familiarize the sangat with places where
major Sikh events had unfolded. Travelers who explored areas around major sites
discovered many new gurdwaras on these pilgrimages. These journeys made possible a
new kind of exploration and a search for something that the travelers had heard of or read
somewhere but not been to themselves. The expectations from such travels, in journeying
to mythical places to find real gurdwaras and real congregations, were undoubtedly
enormous. But they were not always met with satisfying conditions.
The pilgrimage reports drew important links between the congregations’ devotion
and commitment and the condition of these gurdwaras. One of the reports commissioned
by the All-India Gurteerath Pilgrimage Committee mentioned the ‘benefits’ of going on
such pilgrimages. These were:
i. Gurdwaras, the pujaris’ and sevadars need our careful attention and it is now
our duty to keep ourselves informed on their work. ii. We also need to
understand the shortcomings in gurdwara management after having visited
these places to improve it through our own seva, whatever that may require.
iii. To spread the message of Khalsa through the gurdwaras. This also requires
that other communities see us taking care of our gurdwaras. iv. To keep in
touch with the brothers who live outside of Punjab. 13
Future pilgrimages organized by the same committee thus stated their goal as: “[to]
keep a check on the management of gurdwaras” and inspire the congregation in distant
places by sending more and frequently organized pilgrims. The reports also mention the
need to uphold gurdwaras to institutional standards in managing the gurdwaras and Sikhi
(correct way of being Sikh) at large. These institutional standards, as discussed in Chapter
Two, directed the way the building should look: for example, nishan sahib, a long pole
13 Hukam Singh Raees Kalyan Montgomery, Roznamcha arthat ji Sarab Hind Gurteerath Yatra (Lahore,
1930).
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with a saffron-colour cloth wrapped on it, became a characteristic sign that people would
recognize and know that a gurdwara is around. The nishan sahib was to be placed outside
the gurdwara and was to be tall enough to be seen from a distance. Nishan literally means
mark and this was the mark or signal that Sikhs were residing here. While the tradition of
the nishan sahib was introduced by the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, it was not always
found in the gurdwaras. As the pilgrimage organized in 1930 found, there were many
gurdwaras that were missing the nishan sahib. An injunction to ensure that a nishan sahib
was placed in all gurdwaras was consequently passed in the Gurdwara Gazette in 1934,
indicating an intricate web of information and influence between gurdwara committees
and the centrally organized management committee in Amritsar.14
The physical space of these gurdwaras was standardized to fit a certain ideal of
commitment to the faith. For instance, the use of marble and white washed walls became
common adaptations to most gurdwaras all over India, a practice that has received the ire
of various Sikh scholars and conservation architects.15 Pilgrimages then were important in
spreading these standards to distant gurdwaras, where the pilgrims may have found
different conditions from their expectations.
The organizers of the annual reports and similar gurdwara pilgrimage reports
claimed that even when the report was published in 1930s, there were gurdwaras that
were heard of but were nowhere to be found. This meant that these gurdwaras were
4. 15 Gurmeet Rai, “Abode of Bliss: Historiography of Anandpur Sahib”, Nishaan 1/1, (1999), 14–
27; Gurmeet Rai and Kavita Singh, “Brick by Sacred Brick: Architectural Projects of Guru Arjan and
Guru Hargobind”,in Kavita Singh (ed.) New Insights into Sikh Art, (Marg, 2003), 32-49; Patwant
Singh and Gurmeet Rai, “Marble and Memory”, Indian Express, (23 December, 1998).
103
neither marked with a building, nor did they have a functioning management or an active
congregation. The pilgrimage made attempts to recover and revive gurdwaras that were
documented in works like Navan ate Thavan da Mahankosh and other such
encyclopaedias and gurdwara guides that were widely published and circulated since the
beginning of the twentieth century under Singh Sabha reforms.
Anne Murphy makes a similar point on the transition of gurdwaras from the
romantic notion of places that the Gurus had visited or had performed miracles in to
gurdwaras as built structures commemorating the memory of the Gurus and Sikh history
in a physical and territorial way. She says that as a result of colonial rule, there was a shift
in how gurdwaras were perceived in Sikh thought and practice, which required the
ownership of the property of the gurdwaras both in the name of the community and in the
nexus between community, history, and territory.16 Pilgrimages like the Sarb-Hind
Gurteerath Yatra and similar travels by other individual pilgrims aimed to fill this gap by
finding places, pointing them out to the authorities to build appropriate gurdwara
structures, and assigning managers and staff for these places. For example, the first
pilgrimage organized by the Sarb-Hind Gurteerath Yatra claimed to have found the
following gurdwaras in and around Lahore: Gurdwara Nanakgarh, Sahidganj Singhnian,
Shahidganj Bhai Dharam Singh ji, Shahidi Khun, and Gurdwara Baba Buddha.17
The reports describe how the pilgrims discovered the gurdwaras in exploring the
areas believed to be associated with these legendary stories. The pilgrims would
16 Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Past, 156–170. 17 The report mentions the names of the explorers: Sardar Arur Singh ji Taib, the secretary of the organizing
committee, Gyani Kartar Singh ji Hitkari and Bhai Atma Singh ji, all of whom were well-known Sikh
leaders of Lahore and had been on the Board to organize this pilgrimage.
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undertake a historical approach, looking for signs that could point to a past use and asking
local people for stories and myths of the past. The story of Dhuni Chand, for example, is
well known in Sikh legend as that of a rich man who gave up amassing wealth and turned
to the work of charity and nam (Guru’s name) after meeting Guru Nanak. The pilgrims
believed that Gurdwara Nanakgarh was the place where Guru Nanak had met Dhuni
Chand and showed him the right path to liberation. The report claims that the pilgrims
found a house here, but neither was there a Sikh caretaker, nor was the Guru Granth Sahib
placed. What was found instead was a non-Sikh caretaker who claimed to be taking care
of this important Sikh shrine as it was handed to his family for generations. The story
seemed to have been a popular one in the area, and the locals attested to this being the
place where Dhuni Chand had met Guru Nanak. The pilgrims wrote reports and sent it to
the SGPC, demanding a proper gurdwara be constructed in this place.
The report does not mention how the house was bought or converted into a
gurdwara, and it does not indicate any resistance from the caretakers that had stayed here
for generations. It does, however, assert that the gurdwara had been discovered and the
authorities were alerted to its existence. The report mentions many other sites that were
discovered to either be occupied by non-Sikh people and in need of conversion into
gurdwaras or be places that were already gurdwaras, but in very bad shape. Some of these
gurdwaras had been leased as mere property to members of other communities. For
instance, Gurdwara Baoli Sahib, constructed in the memory of the fifth Guru, was found
to be in disrepair. What seems to have made the situation more alarming is that it was not
an insignificant and unheard of gurdwara. It is believed that Maharaja Ranjit Singh had
constructed a large pond here to add to the beauty of this gurdwara and had also granted
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landed property of several thousand rupees to aid in the caretaking of the gurdwara and its
attendant mahants. However, because of its disuse, the report claims, the property had
been rented out to shopkeepers, and houses had been constructed over time.
The gurdwara came under SGPC’s domain but the Kartarpur Sodhis, claiming their
inheritance from the fifth Guru, disputed the SGPC’s control. The SGPC was already
amid property disputes between allegedly private property versus public grounds of
worship and community-owned religious property in the bungas issue, discussed in
Chapter Four. The Sodhis wanted to keep their own management style and wanted their
authority to continue, whereas the SGPC desired to bring the gurdwara under its own
control by setting up a local gurdwara committee that was ultimately accountable to the
SGPC. The question, however, was not that of management alone, but one of the sangat
owning and indirectly controlling the gurdwara property over individual families’ claims
and inheritance rights, discussed in Chapter Four. The higher moral ground claimed by
the sangat forced these individuals to reconsider their own position as gurdwara owners
and managers, and eventually to give up all claims to these properties. However, this was
not an easy battle. Many legal cases were fought, and moral arguments were made to
slowly convince various people opposing or resisting the management committee’s plans
for gurdwara construction and expansion to go through.
As the collective pilgrimages discovered older places associated with Sikh Gurus’
lives and places where gurdwaras could be constructed, the SGPC started sending
individual explorers out to discover more gurdwaras. Individuals could lead a more
intensive and yet widespread survey of the areas to search for gurdwaras. Also, given the
historical moment when gurdwaras had become the main drivers behind any kind of
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social, political, and religious act, individual explorations bore fruit in ways that
collective pilgrimages could not. For example, Pardhuman Singh Senior, the “gurdwara
historian,”18 wrote a book called Gurdham Deedar arthat Gurdham Darpan, published in
1929.19 The work followed the common genre of the period with brief historical
descriptions of each gurdwara, classified according to regions, districts, and sometimes
villages within these districts. The author provides information on how to get to these
gurdwaras, which trains to take, which places to stay at, and the condition of these
gurdwaras. Bhai Kahn Singh of Nabha used Pardhuman Singh’s discoveries and research
to compile the Gurshabad Mahankosh in 1931, which is the most authoritative
encyclopaedia on Sikhism. Pardhuman Singh says that he was encouraged by Bhai Kahn
Singh (better known for his treatise Hum Hindu Nahini, which is believed to have driven
the final barrier between Hindus and Sikhs according to scholars like N.G. Barrier and
Kenneth Jones) to undertake such an exploration and pilgrimage of the gurdwaras, as it
was increasingly felt that not enough was known on the condition of the gurdwaras in far-
out places.
The SGPC gave Pardhuman Singh letters of introduction to conduct what seems
like an official inquiry into the gurdwaras in different parts of the country in 1926.
However, it was the Prince of Nabha that provided stipends to sustain these efforts.
Pardhuman Singh visited some seven to eight hundred gurdwaras in three years and
18 The Sikh Historical Research Board hires historians and other scholars who work from the Sikh
Reference Library, attached to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Their duties include doing research,
conserving manuscripts, and publishing official histories and religious works according to the SGPC’s
official line. 19 Pardhuman Singh Senior, Gurdham Deedar arthat Gurdham Darpan (Lala Devi Das Janki Das Printers,
Amritsar, May 22, 1929).
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emphasized that he had not accumulated information by hearsay but had visited every one
of these gurdwaras. He complained that many gurdwaras were in terrible neglect, but that
renovation work had begun in some of them.
In a more uncompromising mood, Pardhuman Singh launched a new complaint, one
that got to the root of this exercise and its significance for the entire community. Citing
examples of a few gurdwaras, he chastised the community for forgetting and not
recognizing the actual historical events in relation to the physical landscape. For example,
he claimed that the gurdwara in Patna was not just associated with the tenth Guru but with
his father. He says that the community had highlighted the gurdwaras where Guru Gobind
Singh grew up and played but had easily let go of the memories of the place where the
ninth Guru, Teghbahadur, decided to fight the Mughal emperor for his intolerance to
other religions. Although Pardhuman Singh’s claims did not change the dominant
narrative of Guru Gobind Singh’s childhood gurdwaras in Patna, it is telling of the
attempts to reorder historical memories and associations to Sikh sacred places.
A more significant contribution of his work was in discovering gurdwaras.
Pardhuman Singh’s aim was not just to travel to gurdwaras and record their conditions
but also to find those gurdwaras that were known of and had been recorded in the list of
gurdwaras. Pardhuman Singh said that some gurdwaras were alleged to be places and
associated with events in the lives of the Gurus but were nowhere to be found when he
visited these sites. He wished to give maps of all the sites he had visited but would do so
in subsequent publications. Pardhuman Singh only wanted to create a list of gurdwaras
that were to be found credibly in the places that the compilations attested they would but
gave no suggestions on what could be done where gurdwaras were not found, according
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to janamsakhis or other literary material. However, the individual quest to find gurdwaras
and report on them continued, and through institutional and official support, other
scholars resolved this issue over time. Shamsher Singh Ashok, a well-known Sikh scholar
and the Director of the Sikh Research Board in Amritsar, furthered and used Pardhuman
Singh’s list of gurdwaras to compile a bigger list, covering more areas, to create a
credible list of gurdwaras that would come under the SGPC’s control in 1952.
Ashok was also more decisive in suggesting an outcome for such searches that
yielded no results. He suggested that a group of researchers should go through all the
written material there was within Sikhism with a fine toothcomb, compile the names of
the gurdwaras, and send out pilgrims who would also work in search teams. He gave an
example of his own work. Sifting through a very long list of authoritative texts, Ashok
compiled a list of two hundred and fifty gurdwaras associated with Guru Nanak’s life.20
The rest, Ashok said, are either lost to us or are given in apocryphal sources and cannot
be believed. He suggested that similar searches should be made for the other nine Gurus’
gurdwaras to compile a true list of places that rightfully belong to the Sikh community.21
Contrary to Murphy’s suggestion that gurdwaras were material representations and
‘proof’ of the Sikh past, which had been narrativized in historical texts in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, we can see that gurdwaras were being used to question and
authenticate written materials in significant ways. In other words, instead of a simplistic
Singh, Sri Guru Nanak Prakash by Bhai Santokh Singh, Twarikh Guru Khalsa part one, Gyani Gyan
Singh, Pandit Tara Singh Narottam Gurteerath Sangreh, Gurdwara Darpan by Sant Arjun Muni, Sri
Gurdwara Darshan by Gyani Thakur Singh, Gurdham Deedar by Bhai Parduman Singh Sr, Gurdham
Sangreh by Gyani Gyan Singh and Gurteerath Darshan by Bhai Nanak Singh Jagiasu. 21 Shamsher Singh Ashok, Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji de Pavitar Asthan Dharamsala ate Gurdwara (Dharam
Prachar Committee, SGPC, 1970).
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relationship between Sikh literary works and Sikh gurdwaras, a more complex process of
exploring, verifying, and documentation was taking place. These expeditions and
verification projects had consequences on both the written representations and in
restoring gurdwaras, impacting the plans and policies for the future.
The mission to discover gurdwaras gained wider popularity across the Sikh
community even in 2000s.22 Many gurdwara guides came out within a span of two
decades of the Gurdwara Reform Movement, from 1920 to 1940, which dealt with issues
of searching for gurdwaras that existed only in the minds of Sikhs and did not necessarily
have a physical existence beyond. This resulted in two plans: the less common one was to
strike out the thought that such gurdwaras existed on any piece of land and to reconsider
whether the stories were true. The more common plan was to continue with the search
and eventually build one with the help of the sangat. The kar seva (organized community
service) board’s appeals to the sangat to donate funds for building gurdwaras can be
found even in present day gurdwaras. The sangat’s involvement was essential in such
projects of discovery and construction, which not only brought them together as a
community of believers in the Guru, the granth and the gurdwara,23 but also allowed them
to place their beliefs in a physical place. This is not to suggest that the move towards
building and rebuilding gurdwaras was purely territorial within the Punjab or elsewhere.
The efforts to build gurdwaras should be the Sikh community’s efforts at becoming
visibly present in certain areas, or in asserting control on what they believed to be
22 Anne Murphy mentions the project to discover gurdwaras in early 2000s, especially when gurdwaras
were associated with Gurus’ objects. For more see, Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Past. 23 Harjot Oberoi says that the trinity for Sikhs of Guru, Granth, and Gurdwara were a creation of the Singh
Sabha reformers. For more, see: Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries (University
of Chicago Press, 1994).
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historically theirs. However, the practices in these gurdwaras, the ways in which the kar
sevas were done, were not predetermined and not uniform.
Building Gurdwaras: Recovery, Repair, and Signs
The second annual trip organized by the Sarb-Hind Gurteerath Yatra Committee differed
from the first in one important way. While the first had been preoccupied with exploring,
discovering, and reporting on the conditions of gurdwaras, the second pilgrimage
highlighted the ‘progress’ of renovation works at gurdwaras. The report emphasized that
the condition of gurdwaras impacted the community in significant ways. The buildings
and their repair, the cleanliness of the gurdwaras, their management in the form of
sevadars and managers, and finally the signposts in historic gurdwaras were indicative of
the relationship between gurdwaras and the community. It was believed that the external
appearance of gurdwaras said much about the community’s commitment to their faith. If
the gurdwaras looked unkempt and abandoned, then who protected the faith from within?
The first annual report gave detailed histories of all the gurdwaras that were visited
and discovered. The following reports, on the other hand, were closer to journal entries,
where the publicity department gave details about everyday arrangements of the
pilgrimage and the condition of gurdwaras. Notwithstanding the brevity of the following
annual pilgrimage reports, the writers missed no opportunity to point out the pain felt by
pilgrims in seeing many gurdwaras in need of urgent repair. Appeals were made in these
reports asking for skilled engineers and constructors from within the community who
would be willing to contribute their time and knowledge in constructing the gurdwaras.
The appeals stated that the gurdwaras were not commensurate to their historical value and
did not hold up to the standards expected of Sikh gurdwaras of historical importance,
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because there was nothing remarkable about the physical place that matched the evocative
space for the Sikh community. Historical gurdwaras were required to look elaborate and
given the prominence they deserved. The use of certain materials and styles of building
with a number of levels would highlight the gurdwaras’ importance to the community.
The main concerns were about having an appropriate building structure,
maintenance, and signage that directed the sangat into the building and told them how and
why these gurdwaras were important. These external features directed the sangats’
experience of these historic and religious sites, weighing upon their behaviour in the
place. If it was a place of triumph, one was directed to feel joy, and in places of traumatic
loss and suffering, one was to feel certain grief or melancholy. Informative narratives
were displayed outside the gurdwaras that would inform pilgrims and visitors alike of the
history of the place. To facilitate guided tours, informed information officers were to be
found in the gurdwaras, according to the size and scale of the gurdwara. Further,
museums and museum-like displays were created in some gurdwaras, with painted scenes
depicting such episodes as had only been heard or read about. Visualizing this material
through different forms and means became standard practice, and much of this was a
consequence of the pilgrimages organized on an annual basis.
For instance, Gurdwara Bandi Chorr in Gwalior is a historically important Sikh
gurdwara associated with the sixth Guru, Hargobind. It is believed that the Mughal
Emperor held the sixth Guru captive for challenging him by taking over temporal and
spiritual authority after his father, the fifth Guru’s, assassination. He was kept captive in
the Gwalior fort along with other regional kings and princes. When he was finally
released, he took with him fifty-two prisoners that had been held in the fort as prisoners,
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hence the name Bandi (prisoner) Chorr (free). When the first annual pilgrimage reached
the site, they found no gurdwara here but a small sign that pointed the pilgrims to a jail.
Neither the Guru Granth Sahib nor a granthi was placed here, and no physical distinction
was made to highlight the miracle performed by the sixth Guru of releasing all the
prisoners with him. The situation seemed like it could not get worse: the sangat found two
graves within a small room that had been built over time. The report said, “To get to the
graves, there is only a narrow passage and even here no one knows how to get to it and
what to do when you do get there. Are you to feel joy for the liberation of the Guru and
the miracle performed? Or sad because the sangat has forgotten the miracles performed
by the Guru?”24 There remained the question of whose graves had been built in the sacred
and pure site for the Sikhs, a question that strangely was not asked in the pilgrimage
report.
The writers suggest that the area be bought over from the royal family of Gwalior to
build a spectacular gurdwara in its place. The writers asked, “What good are the property
disputes, when historic gurdwaras are in such neglect?”25 No other gurdwara, they wrote,
should be claimed until all the historic gurdwaras falling within the first schedule of the
Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 were fully secured and gurdwaras had been built on their
sites.
The following year the pilgrimage committee organized a similar yatra (pilgrimage)
and visited the same places that it had the previous year. Having reached the same
gurdwara on March 13, 1931, a year after the first pilgrimage, the report claims that
24 Hukam Singh Raees Kalyan Montgomery, Roznamcha, 62–63. 25 Hindustan de prasidh gurdwarian di yatra (Lahore, 1930).
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nothing had been done to improve the condition of the gurdwara. On the contrary, the
sangat now had to pay a ticket fee of Annas 2 (the currency used in South Asia before the
Rupee) to visit the gurdwara, which was in the fort.26 The writer says that a gurdwara was
now functional with the Guru Granth Sahib kept inside and karah prashad (sweet
offering given back to devotees in the gurdwara) was offered. However, the lack of a
proper building, an entrance, the nishan sahib, and signboards continued to aggrieve the
sangat. These became the standard markers of a gurdwara, and a historic gurdwara
deserved all of these.
Figure 15: New Building of the Gurdwara Bandi Chorr (2012)
the Anandpur resolution were specific to that historical moment and was not as widely
acceptable amongst the wider Sikh community, especially those who lived outside the
Punjab.
Disciplining Practices and Bodies through Pilgrimages
A period of reforming behaviour and actions was brought about with the passing of the
Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925. One of the principle ways in which people were to be trained
in behaving a certain way in the gurdwara was through pilgrimages—collective and
individual. Pilgrimage trips were ideal in initiating the ‘correct’ and standard Sikh
practices, which were highlighted at the better known gurdwaras, which could be brought
home and further trickled down. Notwithstanding these efforts at streamlining gurdwara
practices, there remained debates on what was considered purely Sikh and what was
thought to be Hindu practices. A common way to settle on a practice was to suggest that it
had come directly from the Guru’s time and was a practice that the Guru or the sants and
bhagats (holy men) like Bhai Buddha had started. To question such logic was made
impossible by the moral force of tracing the lineage of these practices back to the Guru.
The Guru, it was stated, began a certain ritual or practice and it was now the duty of all
Sikhs to follow such practices.
For instance, the second report by the Sarb-Hind Gurteerath Yatra Committee
claimed that a common problem was that people did not understand the protocols of
traveling with the Guru Granth Sahib on the train. An entire passenger car had been
reserved for the proper and respectful carrying of the Guru Granth Sahib to create a
private gurdwara on wheels for pilgrims to perform their daily rituals. The reports
complained that people used this passenger car for sleeping and getting on to the train,
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and even to move between cars, as opposed to understanding the need for respect and
privacy of the Guru Granth Sahib. They did not even observe sukhasan (ritual of resting
the sacred scriptures) and prakash (ritual of awakening the sacred scriptures) of the Guru
Granth Sahib.28
Yet, there remained spaces to argue whether something was truly a command of the
Guru or not. For instance, Pardhuman Singh, author of Gurdham Deedar arthat Gurdham
Darpan, published in 1929, says that the Sikh community had forgotten that earthen
lamps or jots were lit by the Gurus themselves and were mistakenly giving up this
practice as a Hindu one. He criticized the Sikh public and the managers of the gurdwaras
that he visited (seven to eight hundred gurdwaras, according to his own accounting) all
over India for not recognizing the value of Sikh practices as initiated by the Gurus.
Considering these reforms, Pardhuman Singh censured the excessive haste in dropping
practices that seemed Hindu but were not actually so. The issue of jots and lighting lamps
is not just a concern of early Gurdwara Reform Movement days in the 1920s and early
1930s but continues to be a problematic issue for the Sikh community. Madanjit Kaur,
author of the Golden Temple: Past and Present, was similarly criticized on various
forums for writing about the lighting of the jot in the Golden Temple in 1984. The
critiques ranged from her lack of proper knowledge and research to misinformation and
her Hindu ‘bias.’29 The issue of recording and disseminating correct Sikh practices has
been a difficult task and draws little consensus within the community. The SGPC and its
wings in the form of the Dharam Prachar Committee, the information department, and the
28 Hukam Singh Raees Kalyan Montgomery, Roznamcha. 29 Madanjit Kaur, personal conversation with author, April 2014.
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sevadars within the gurdwara perform a very important task in streamlining these
practices.
Sikh practices within the gurdwara were important precisely because they could
be watched and disciplined. For instance, the practices of cleaning and decorating the
room that housed the Guru Granth Sahib were especially important as these would
cascade to other smaller gurdwaras as well as private houses which kept the Guru Granth
Sahib. Similarly, having clean grounds and a clean body, especially when entering the
gurdwara, became paramount. These rituals marked the space as special and distinct from
other spaces. What is interesting is the novelty of such practices that marked the spaces as
clean and sacred. For instance, there are pictures and texts showing the presence of
animals in the parikrama (pathway around the amrit sarovar) of the Golden Temple,
which became a serious problem after the 1920s.30 There were certain practices that
began during pilgrimages and were meant to trickle down as the correct form of Sikhi to
the sangat. While some practices were meant to be embodied everywhere, whether the
home or the gurdwara or elsewhere, there were also special practices that distinguished
the space of the gurdwara as sacred and significant.
Various scholars have worked on the relationship between the ritual act of
cleaning and religious discipline. The impact of these small actions is significant for our
understanding of the community’s relationship with the gurdwara, and the gurdwaras’
place in distinguishing the permissible from the forbidden. These rules were tested
immediately after the Gurdwara Reform Movement but gained stringency in later years as
30 Gurmat Gurbani Pracharak Jatha, Chetavani pattar, No. 5 to the attention of SGPC and Local Darbar
Committee, (Amritsar, 1936).
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the authority of the sevadars increased in the gurdwaras. Stringent checks on visitors,
pilgrims, and tourists alike are now common in gurdwaras, where sevadars do not only
look after the gurdwara but also look after the people who come to the gurdwaras, telling
them how they can and cannot behave. 31 Rules about where to sit, stand, and walk are
important to the sevadars. People are stopped from entering the gurdwara if they do not
wash their feet in the tanks provided outside the gurdwara or seem to be carrying any
form of intoxicants. If the sevadars are suspicious they will open the visitor’s bags or
check the person to see if they are carrying anything problematic. There are many other
examples of the sevadars disciplining the visitors to the gurdwara.32 Also, many works
advised the sevadars to speak politely to visitors to set the right example.33
Finally, the schedule for prayers and their location in the gurdwara crystallized over
the years through repeated practices and the various writings on gurdwaras. The practices
were neither new nor were they innovations, but the rigor and precision with which they
were carried out, along with the added ceremony, amplified them more than before. For
example, the Guru Granth Sahib being placed in sukhasan started much before the
Gurdwara Reform Movement. However, some of the questions about placement, timing,
and personnel were new. This was mainly because management changed hands and new
pujaris (priests) and sevadars had to be assigned these roles, but the question of location
was important precisely because this decision would have repercussions on the built form
of the gurdwaras.
31 Personal observations (August 2013–2014). 32 “Gurdwara pavitrata ate panthak seva lai yatan”, Khalsa Samachar, May 12, 1929, 3. 33 Gurmat Gurbani Pracharak Jatha, Chetavani pattar, No. 5 to the attention of SGPC and Local Darbar
Committee, (Amritsar, 1936).
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The Guru Granth Sahib is now placed in the Akal Takhat for sukhasan at night for
about two to three hours. But the place for sukhasan was not always the Akal Takhat.
Various books suggest that some bungas were the chosen place for taking the Guru
Granth Sahib for sukhasan and would return from here to the main shrine in the morning
hours. Swaiyya Singh says that Baba Miha Singh’s bunga, close to the Ghadiala Bunga,
was the chosen spot for many years until the Akal Takhat became the obvious choice.
Jagjit Singh also mentions the placing of the Guru Granth Sahib at the bungas for
sukhasan as a practice that was started during the misl (sovereign states of Sikh
confederacy) period in the early nineteenth century, although it is stated that during Guru
Arjan’s time, both the Guru and the Guru Granth Sahib, which then was a pothi
(scriptures but not the fully compiled sacred scriptures of the Sikh community), would
rest and the Guru chose to sleep at a lower level than the resting pothi. The placing of the
Guru Granth Sahib during sukhasan was important because when the management
committee demolished bungas, it had already established new rituals of placing the sacred
scriptures in the Akal Takhat.
Perhaps another precedent for the increasing value of the parikrama was the
practice of rehras sahib in the evening. This is a practice allegedly started when the sixth
Guru was captured in the Gwalior Fort (where Gurdwara Bandi Chhor is now built) under
the guidance of Baba Buddha. The ritual consists of the granthi carrying the Guru Granth
Sahib on his head and walking around the parikrama. Jagjit Singh mentions carrying
torches on this procession to feel the nearness of the Guru, which is no longer needed as
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the parikrama is well lit with electricity.34 The practice of taking the Guru Granth Sahib
around the parikrama every evening became an important ritual, one that many pilgrims
and daily worshippers attended, giving the management reason to widen the parikrama,
for which many bungas were acquired and brought down. The building fervour, it seems,
had only just begun after the formation of the SGPC. The management of the Golden
Temple Complex directly influenced the decisions vis-à-vis the gurdwaras that would be
maintained and those that needed to be built or rebuilt within the parikrama. Religious
performances, pilgrimages and building activities were thus tied to each other and
impacted the way Sikhs were disciplined.
34 “With sun-set Rahras, the Evening Prayer is recited by the Granthi. Then all standing offer Ardas at His
Feet. Shortly after this a party of priests and pilgrims with a standard and torches starts from the main-
gate of the Temple. They go around the Tank reading and reciting hymns in the praise of Great God.
(note: Guru Har Gobind had to move out of Amritsar. The Sikhs left at Amritsar felt very keenly the
pangs of His separation. Headed by Bhai Budhha, they commenced a divine service of Dhyanam in
1612. Every evening they would light torches and go in procession round the Shrine, feeling the
Master to be with them. On Guru’s return He told Bhai Budhha how that devotion had attracted His
mind to the Golden Temple every evening. He blessed them, saying that the nightly choir organized
by Bhai Budha would abide forever at Hari Madir and that He would always be there observing it.”
Jagjit Singh, Temple of Spirituality (Sikh Religious Tract Society, 1935), 70.
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Chapter Four: Resisting Desecration: Preserving Bungas as Symbol or Material
Bunga jugo jugo atal (Long Live Bungas)
- Sikh ardas
Figure 16: Painting of the tank of Amritsarji founded by Guru Ram Das Sahib, c. 1855-60 courtesy
Other bungas were also well-known for their support to scientific studies and practices
like Ayurveda, Yunani medicine, and surgical experiments. For example, Bhai Wasti
Ram’s Bunga was particularly known for patronizing ascetics and scholars interested in
the study of science and the body and in conducting surgical experiments. Other bungas
became famous for promoting the study of languages—especially the Punjabi language,
for example Braham Buta Akhara was associated with many literary works in the Punjabi
language and regular schooling for children around the area.2
After the Gurdwara Reform Movement (1920–1925), the SGPC assumed the
management of the gurdwara property, igniting debates about the appropriate functions of
bungas and their fate soon. The SGPC claimed that the bungas rightfully belonged to
them, as they bordered the gurdwara.3 Upon the passing of the Sikh Gurdwara Act in
1925, the SGPC claimed most of the land around the Golden Temple Complex as theirs,
informally known as the “red line,” and submitted the maps and plans accordingly to the
Punjab Government in 1926.4 These claims came to be disputed by the bunga owners and
managers, as concerns regarding their preservation became a key issue to these contests.
Given how important bungas had been in the region’s cultural and social formation, the
bungas had retained some, if not all the previous functions, and a few were still
2 “Bhai Wasti Ram da Bunga”, Khalsa Samachar, December 20, 1940: 2; Madanjit Kaur, “Contribution of
the Bungas”, Punjab History Conference Proceedings, 17-19 March 1978, 94-5; Bhai Kahn Singh
Nabha, Guru Mahima Ratnavali (Punjabi University, 1984). 3 In a more recent case of the demolition of Bunga Ramgarhia at Nanded, the SGPC argued that the bungas
had no reason to exist had the gurdwaras not been there. Once the purpose of bungas was met by
building newer and arguably better and more modern lodging facilities, there was no reason to keep
the bungas anymore. For more, see: Chandar Sutta Dogra, “Have You Eyes for It,” Outlook India,
May 2008. 4 “Petition to Deputy Governor: Ramgarhia Bunga,” Colonel Iqbal Singh, private papers; “Bungeiyan di
khabar” Gurdwara Gazette, Meeting notes, 1928.
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patronized by misl families like the Ahluwalia’s and the Ramgarhias. There were twelve
misls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Misls were bands of Sikhs that rallied together under the leadership of an individual
who represented the group’s interests. These misls can be divided into three subtypes, by
caste, community, and region.5 The misls built the bungas and patronized them for their
upkeep. Some other bungas were also owned by or associated with different social groups
that can be classified by caste, village, and region. These affiliations became particularly
problematic as the SGPC was endeavouring to create a standardized, and thereby a
unified, vision of Sikh identity and practices. As the SGPC extended its control over the
gurdwara, it became evident that the spaces around the gurdwara could not be ignored or
left to other influences or impulses. The struggles between the SGPC and the bunga
owners highlights the anxiety of the SGPC to claim complete control over the gurdwara
and the surrounding areas, and the challenges it faced in such claims of authority and
control over the space. The ownership of bungas became important as these structures
indexed competing visions of Sikhism—SGPC’s as the standard and uniform ideals of
Tat Khalsa and that of bunga patrons as feudal caste and regional affiliations that also
supported exchange of knowledge and information with other religio-cultural centres like
Haridwar, which was another popular centre of religious training. Social and political
power were symbolized in the physical structures of the bungas, as the more important
5 Hari Ram Gupta, History of Sikhs: The Sikh Commonwealth or Rise or Fall (Munshilal Manohar Lal,
“Nature of Misaldari System: A Case-study of Kanhaiya Misl,” Punjab History Conference,
Proceedings, 3rd Session (1968): 169–172.
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bunga owners would have better located and more spacious bungas in the Golden Temple
Complex.
Bungas, however, had changed hands over time from their original caretakers and
owners. Bungas had been sold or leased as private property and were being used for very
different purposes than originally intended. Although the origins of the bungas and their
historical evolution still requires further investigation, this chapter focuses on the latter-
day disputes between the SGPC and the bunga owners and managers, and the grounds
upon which they each made claims to ownership. In other words, how did the SGPC
make claims to, and subsequently acquire the land around, the Golden Temple Complex
when it was not explicitly gurdwara property nor exclusively used for religious purposes?
How did the SGPC acquire bungas after most them were declared waqf (mortmain
property, which is an inalienable religious and charitable endowment),6 but not SGPC-
associated property, by the Gurdwara Tribunal? Finally, in what ways did the bunga
owners and managers challenge and resist such claims?
The SGPC deployed a variety of tactics to incorporate bungas into gurdwara
property to expand the boundary of the gurdwara. The SGPC was particularly concerned
with clearly demarcating the boundary of the gurdwara, both to guard its borders and to
assert its authority within these borders. Bunga owners and managers, on the other hand,
attempted to stake claims on the property as privately owned but as charity nonetheless—
6 Family Law in India says, “Waqf: according to Muslim Waqf Validating Act of 1913, means the
permanent dedication by a person professing Muslim faith of any property for any purpose recognized
by the Muslim law as religious, pious, and charitable. The essentials of waqf are: (a) permanent
dedication of property; (b) the dedicator should be a person professing the faith (c) purpose of
dedication should be religious and for the faith for example charitable organization.” Family Law in
India, 288.
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a phenomenon that came under scrutiny at the end of the nineteenth century.7 The British,
everywhere in the Muslim world, were anxious that “private” waqf was both a form of tax
cheating and also an economic malaise, as it was locking “useful” property away from the
private land market.8 Recent scholarship has highlighted the ways in which the colonial
government introduced new legal classifications under mortmain law, distinguishing
private trust from public trust as well as private from public charity.9
This distinction, it seems, was particularly problematic for establishments like
dharmshalas or rest houses that were privately owned but were used for charitable
purposes.10 Here, there was no clear auditing or taxation practice being used for religious
establishments or activities exclusively. Curiously, SGPC used colonial scrutiny into
private charities in making its claims over the bungas. Over the years, many bungas had
been divided between different family members and had been subsequently sold as shops,
private homes, and warehouses. For instance, some of the legal fights for control of
bungas were not waged with just one owner or manager, but with several claimants who
had acquired the bungas over different periods of time and who used it for very different
purposes. Court cases thus could not be determined on such grounds as the a priori
intention of the building and usage, as discussed by Ritu Birla in the case of Marwari
dharamshalas as private trusts but had to be based on evidence of private property or the
function it was serving at the time of the court case. Here was another question to be
7 Ritu Birla says private charity became a problematic category as there was no clear distinction between
charity being used for the “larger good” of the public or for personal benefits. Birla explains the ways
in which the private and public forms of charitable trusts were distinguished from each other, and the
impact of this on vernacular market practices. For more, see: Ritu Birla, Stages of Capital: Law,
Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). 8 Pascale Ghazaleh, ed., Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World (American University Press, 2011). 9 Ritu Birla, Stages of Capital. 10 Ibid.
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resolved—could waqf land be considered alienable property, especially when such land
had been in the hands of private families and not the gurdwara managers?
The concept of alienation has largely been understood as the ability to buy, sell, or
lease a property and the right to inherit such land. The bunga cases legally came down to
the question of whether they were waqf lands, which, if they were, would make them
inalienable. If they were waqf, should they come under the gurdwara management’s
control directly, or could the families associated with them continue to manage them? In
other words, whose religious authority was not legitimized by the state and its
machinery—the Tribunal? If they were waqf and not gurdwara-managed, then what was
their status? Were all bungas waqf, even if private families owned and lived in them?
What of the caste affiliations, regional groups, and associations and classes of people that
had historically protected the gurdwara? Religious identification was not mutually
exclusive or exhaustive of one’s self-perceptions. Notwithstanding, would these
affiliations dissipate as soon as the SGPC took over the management of the gurdwara and
its properties?
For these reasons, alienability was not just a matter of land transactions or the
right to inherit such property; alienability of the bungas had also to achieve the severing
of all other associations, memories, and histories that had significance to many groups’
Sikh identities. As it will become clear, such associations and affiliations never ended and
continued to persist under sants and deras in and outside the Punjab. I argue that the
quickest way for the SGPC to achieve this authority over other affiliations,
notwithstanding its failure, was to demolish the bungas, which had become the material
instantiations of such affiliations and associations.
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The SGPC responded to the bunga owners and managers’ defence of private
property by asserting their sole control over the Sikh religious domain. Unlike other
religious communities in the Punjab, the SGPC allowed Sikhs to choose community
representatives, at least in the religious sphere. However, the SGPC used this claim of
democratic rule to put an end to any challenge to its activities. The question that
remained, then, was whether the bungas were religious properties or private properties?
How were these properties inherited? Could the SGPC alone claim to represent all Sikhs,
especially when claims to the contrary were made by smaller caste groups?
Eventually, the SGPC acquired various bungas through different tactics, many
times after forcing the owners to bequeath the property as a gift to the community. These
tactics did not mean relying solely on the Sikh Gurdwara Act, although it had many uses
in helping establish control over gurdwara properties. Despite having recourse to a set of
laws and a special Tribunal committee adjudicating matters of the gurdwara exclusively,
the SGPC deployed a complex repertoire of methods to acquire and establish control over
different properties around the Golden Temple Complex. The struggle over bungas allows
us to examine these vestiges of different visions and views for the community through a
different archive. It allows analysis of the SGPC beyond its publications, self-
representations, and propaganda, founded upon claims and counterclaims in court, which
have produced a significant record of its actions.
The SGPC was, above all, concerned with establishing its position within the
community by consolidating its strength and authority over gurdwaras. By transforming
the space of the Golden Temple through its cleansing drive and building projects,
discussed in the previous chapter, it took hold of more than gurdwara territory. It wanted
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to control what the buildings signified—historically, politically, culturally, and in
religious terms. The bunga owners, on the other hand were concerned with retaining their
control over the properties and their historical roles and value in the past.
Claiming Authority: Thinking Through and with the Past
The basis of the Gurdwara Reform Movement in the Punjab was to create community-
elected governance of Sikh religious establishments and wrest them from the hands of
pro-British mahants.11 The Sikh Gurdwara Act passed because of this movement, which
included the formation of a special judicial committee called the Gurdwara Tribunal to
assess whether religious lands were gurdwaras or other religious spaces. This meant that
the gurdwaras now had to be defined and this definition had to be socialized with other
regions.
The politics of the Gurdwara Reform Movement and the SGPC has received
considerable scholarly attention.12 Court cases against other religious communities for
“shared” or contested sites have also been the subject of research.13 However, there exists
little analysis of court cases in which the SGPC fought Sikh community members,
especially those that contested their sole rights to represent all Sikhs in the Punjab. The
bunga cases highlight the resistance met by the SGPC. These cases also point to the
dissatisfaction that had set in as a result of prolonged court cases, which did not always
11 Mohinder Singh, The Akali Movement (Macmillan, 1978). 12 Mohinder Singh, Akali Movement; Ganda Singh, Some Confidential Papers on Akali Movement (SGPC,
1965); Rajiv Kapur, Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith (Vikas, 1987); Paul R. Brass, Language,
Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge University Press, 1974); Baldev Nayar, Minority
Politics in Punjab (Princeton, 1966). 13 David Gilmartin, “Shahidganj Mosque Incident: A Prelude to Pakistan,” in Islam, Politics and Social
Movements, ed. Edmund Burke and Ira M. Lapidus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
131
yield results in favour of the SGPC.14 Different interest groups, especially the mahants,
challenged the moral and religious high ground taken by the SGPC as the representative
of the Sikh community as well as its claim to be sole caretaker of the communities’
religious institutions. Special memos were sent to the colonial officers appealing to their
partiality to customs and traditional rights.15Added to this, Udasis and other religious
groups were also contesting for their specific rights; overall there was an increasing
number of cases not in favour of the SGPC, which were lost to udasis and mahants. The
SGPC leaders felt a sudden urgency to show quick successes to the community. The
enormity of the costs and the amount of time and effort spent on each case, which at times
had more than one or two plaintiffs, was much more than the management committee had
bargained for. Many of these cases were filed out of immediate euphoria for the passing
of the Sikh Gurdwara Act and were obviously not worth the accruing costs. These cases,
it was appealed to the Punjab Government, should be withdrawn, and until such a time
that an amendment allowing for cases to be taken back be passed, it was requested that
the Gurdwara Tribunal be summarily suspended.16 This chapter highlights the ways in
which the SGPC tactically used different legal classifications and practices to acquire
land and buildings around the gurdwara and their opponents’ arguments to prevent such
attempts.
14 “Mukadmiyan sambandhi vichar”, Gurdwara Gazette, June 1931. An article on the drain of resources in
all shapes and form—money, time and effort—it argues that at the rate it is going, it will take 65 years
and 14 lakh Rupees to see through all the cases that are registered in the tribunals. 15 “Udasi Memo to The Honarable Mr. Justice Coldstream I.C.S. President Gurdwara Tribunal,” [3
December 1928], No. 3472 Judl., State Archives of Punjab, Chandigarh and Civil Secretariat Home
General 1927, file no. 5495. 16 Gurdwara Gazette, Meeting notes, July 1931.
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At the most basic level, bunga cases were fought on the grounds of whether they
were to be considered private property or not. But a more specific and more significant
issue was the need for and meaning of historic preservation—maintaining the diverse
profiles of the buildings around the gurdwara. The SGPC had made clear its desire to
demolish these structures early on, claiming they were arenas of mischief and profane
activities.17 In establishing tighter boundaries around the gurdwara and maintaining
greater control on its thoroughfare, the SGPC focused on their everyday uses, whereas the
bunga owners and managers insisted upon a historical view of the bunga, asserting their
symbolic and historical value for the community. The legal contests over their fate
highlight an early step in the SGPC’s evolving understanding of historic structures that
were not necessarily or wholly religious in function, but which were characterized as
waqf properties nonetheless.18
Since bungas were used for different purposes—as schools for children, as hospitals
or medical centres, as printing shops and warehouses as well as rest houses for pilgrims—
there was no one legal category under which these structures could be placed within the
judicial process.19 For example, Bunga Sher Singh had been divided into at least three
main parts. One of these functioned as a rest house, but the other two functioned as
private properties, although legally they were all considered to be waqf land and therefore
17 Santokh Singh B.Sc., Sri Report Sri Darbar Sahib, (SGPC pub., 1929) and Report Sri Darbar Sahib,
(SGPC pub., 1931). 18 A similar case of samadhis, or cenotaphs, was brought up around the same time as the bunga cases started
being registered. The cenotaphs at Shahida Gurdwara, in close proximity to the Golden Temple
Complex, were brought down and a leveled entrance was built around this gurdwara dedicated to the
memory of Baba Dip Singh. The SGPC received a large number of petitions from different groups
and Sikh individuals that the cenotaphs were sacred and important for the memory of the martyrs in
Sikhism. However, nothing momentous came out of the petitions or demonstrations. Gurdwara
Gazette, Meeting notes, January 1931, and Private Papers of Colonel Iqbal Singh. 19 In fact, Bunga Sarkar had been taken over by the British Government, who made a police station and a
Victorian Clock Tower on this land.
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no one’s private property. Many of these bungas received maintenance grants from the
Golden Temple and continued to be mentioned in the audit reports that were published
annually after the Gurdwara Reform Movement.20
However, many bungas had to survive on their own, partly by leasing smaller
portions of their premises to commercial enterprises, but also by seeking grants from Sikh
princely states and from rich patrons who wished to maintain them. The question of
ownership was further complicated by the question of inheritance. How were bungas
passed from one generation to the next? Were they given as inheritance according to the
laws of primogeniture, the prevalent method in the Punjab? Or were they managed
communally, especially in cases where the bungas were owned by smaller committees or
groups like the Mazhabi Sikh Society?
There were three major types of bungas based on who had commissioned them to
be built. The first was bungas built by Sikh misl chiefs and royalty like Maharaja Ranjit
Singh and Maharaja Sher Singh. Second were those built by different communities like
the Mazhabi Bunga or Bunga Rangretta. And finally, there were bungas built by localities
and prominent villages that acquired land around the Golden Temple at some point and
built smaller pilgrim centres or rest houses to stay.21 Finally, another problem with seeing
bungas in a standard way was that some of these buildings were given grants by the
communities that had built them originally. Were these grants then vested in the building
or the people who managed them? Did these mangers become owners by living in these
20 Bungas like Bunga Jhalliawala, parts of Bunga Sarkar, Bunga Chainpuriya, and many others continued to
get maintenance grants from the Golden Temple. These were both declared waqf in separate court
cases. Gurdwara Gazette, “Audit Reports,” July 1931, 9. 21 For more, see: Parm Bakshish Singh, Golden Temple (Punjabi University Press, 1999), 40–45.
134
buildings and being their caretakers for a set number of years, which was a legal
benchmark for inheriting property rights?
Pre-colonial ownership and inheritance practice have been a subject of many
scholarly works.22 Recently, Anne Murphy has argued that although waqf property rights
were categorized in particular ways under Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign, as documented
in the Khalsa Darbar records, there was a shift in the legal definition, and as a result, a
shift in the concept of private property and ownership with the onset of colonial rule. This
shift meant a deeper desire to own the properties and make the rights alienable and
inheritable. Bungas similarly underwent a change of hands in terms of ownership and
accountability, over a period, although often this was not documented well enough to win
court cases. In studying the religious grants as recorded in the Khalsa Darbar records,
especially grants that were given to the Golden Temple or to the bungas associated with
the gurdwara, it is clear that they were attached to people and not the built structures.23
There was some notion of private property in the period immediately preceding British
rule, where religious grants and establishments were in the hands of individuals assigned
for that specific role, e.g., udasi sants claimed that certain bungas were handed to them
when they were taking care of the Golden Temple. These sants claimed that the bungas
now belonged to them and not to the role of the caretaker, so the next granthi would not
inherit this bunga, which was already in the hands of that specific udasi mahant. This
understanding was contested under religious reformist movements, when the community
22 Irfan Habib, Agrarian Systems of Mughal India: 1556-1707 (Oxford University Press, 1991); Indu
Banga, Agrarian System of the Sikhs: Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century (Manohar,
1978). 23 Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Past (Oxford University Press, 2012), 170–173.
135
became more clearly a corporate and bounded entity24 and desired the control of religious
establishments by community elected representatives as opposed to hereditary managers.
The property rights were therefore to be placed in the sacred scriptures and the caretakers
and managers were to be assigned a more specific and accountable or transparent role.
Historical publications became a viable means for the Singh Sabha reformers to
disseminate their message.25 The SGPC leaders inherited this strategy for cultivating a
sensibility of being Sikh, and to act as the representative leaders of the community. There
was a selective process in applying historical narratives to envision a future for the Sikh
community that did not include bungas and the layered authority of those who had
constructed them. Claiming authority over the Sikh community required a certain kind of
alienation from the collective past that was visibly present in the bungas. But the matter
was not as straightforward as simply extending control over the bungas. SGPC’s claims to
the landed property had to go through the Tribunals to prove legitimacy over these lands.
And beyond the legal procedure, there remained the matter of winning the support of
different caste groups and associations. The bunga cases highlight the anxieties of the
SGPC vis-à-vis different associations and interest groups within the community and their
efforts to maximize their authority over different sections of the community. Despite the
demolition drive that began in the 1930s and lasted till the 1970s, caste groups and
affiliations continue to have a strong influence. This is so much the case that the SGPC
has been ordered to rebuild some bungas by the highest courts in the country in recent
24 Ibid., 173. 25 Historical fiction by reformers like Bhai Vir Singh and Mohan Singh Vaid are particularly well known in
this genre. For more, see: Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity
and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1994) and Anshu Malhotra, Gender,
Caste and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab (Oxford University Press,
2004).
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years in the twenty-first century, discussed below. Although these historic structures have
been lost, their historical value is invoked daily.
Inheriting the Bunga: Private Property or Waqf Land?
In some of the earliest court cases over the bungas, the SGPC attempted to claim control
of gurdwara properties, as they argued against the current managers’ and tenants’ claims
of private ownership and or of inheriting such lands. SGPC argued that Emperor Akbar
had given the gurdwara property to Guru Ramdas as a grant in the late sixteenth
century.26 The area had subsequently become a marketplace known as Guru-ka-bazaar
and eventually taken over by misls to build a protective wall around the gurdwara when it
was endangered. This interpretation meant that the misl families did not own the property
but had merely built on the community’s land. The earliest case where the issue of private
property and right to inheritance became particularly important is in that of Bunga Sher
Singh, controlled by Maharaja Sher Singh, stepson of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Rani
Sada Kaur.
The court case was first filed in 1933 where a judgment in favour of the defendant
was made in 1936. Although the court decided the property was waqf, it declared Bunga
Sher Singh to be a non-gurdwara property and assigned the ownership to the descendants
of Maharaja Sher Singh. The history of this bunga is telling of the biography of these
structures and the competing claims to Sikh practices past and future. Over the nineteenth
century, this bunga had been taken over by three sets of people.
26 Denzil Ibbetson, Punjab Castes; Punjab Government Gazette, (Lahore: Superintendent, Government
When I returned to this gate in 2016, looking for the plaque and asking questions
about it, I was told that such a plaque never existed. The obliteration of this structure and
the memorials associated with it are dangerous because they force certain strident views
over others. However, not all memories are encapsulated in singular lieu de memoire and
re-emerge in other spaces. The SGPC, despite its attempts at producing an authoritative
discourse, struggles to enforce it. To gain supremacy over other practices, the SGPC has
incorporated some of these differences within its own structure, as discussed in Chapter
Three.
Moral Claims and Sikh Representatives
SGPC’s claim as the sole authority of elected Sikh representatives was built on a moral
argument against Udasi and Nirmala mahants and sants. The Akali leaders and the SGPC
managers claimed to have the interest of the community at heart, as the SGPC was a
community elected body. The guidelines for the SGPC’s formation, as given in the Sikh
Gurdwara Act, say that there are 175 members in all and that elections are to be held
every five years. The members stand for election in the Punjab and all registered Sikhs
above the age of eighteen years may vote. The Act aimed to make the community’s voice
heard in gurdwara management and in the management of its funds by electing its
representatives. However, as the committees were formed, it became clear that the
composition of the committee was heavily weighted towards urban-educated and higher-
caste men. The claims of being a united religious community became difficult to bear as
casteism and the rural-urban divide became evident in meetings and ensuing decisions.
Claims that partybazi, or politicking for selfish and petty concerns, were rife in the
activity of the SGPC became a resounding belief amongst most Sikhs and can be seen
144
widely in newspaper editorials from the 1930s onwards. In the interviews I conducted in
Amritsar, this belief that high-caste and petty and selfish leaders drove the SGPC was still
rife. Bungas, at least under the ownership of parties other than the SGPC, served as
reminders of the Sikh community’s failure to transcend distinctions of caste and class,
creating deeper problems for the SGPC. Bungas instantiated different sources of
allegiance and authority.
One significant case highlighting the problems with the SGPC’s claim to represent
all Sikh interests was over Bunga Mazhabi. This case was first filed in 1933 and was re-
appealed in 1975, the judgment for which was finally given in 2005.35 Unlike in the
earlier case discussed here, the SGPC argued that Bunga Mazhabi was not waqf property
anymore and had not been used for religious or charitable purposes for the last twenty
years at least, since the partition of India. The SGPC claimed that it was privately owned
property, held by three different people, and that the management committee had
rightfully and legitimately purchased the property from these different owners. Further,
they pronounced themselves to be the sole representatives of the Sikh community, so the
case as created by the Mazhabi association could not stand—the interests of lower-caste
Sikhs was already represented by the SGPC.36
The ex-military Mazhabi Society was an association of the Mazhabi group, i.e. the
lower-caste group of Chura Sikh (Churas were traditionally known to be leather workers)
35 The case was first filed by the SGPC to take over the Bunga Mazhabi in 1933, but no judgment was
passed until 1940 when it was decidedly given over to the ex-military Mazhabi society. As a result of
Partition, the association was uprooted and it handed over the bunga to Sardar Harnam Singh, making
him sign an affidavit that he was merely a Bungai and not the owner. The sale deeds that the SGPC
presented to the court between Sardar Harnam Singh’s widow and the management body were
therefore rejected as legitimate sales. 36 Appeal no. 870, High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh, Judicial Department.
145
and was a registered society under the Societies Registration Act of 1860. The society
was earlier situated in Shiekhupura, now in Pakistan, where there was a majority base of
the Mazhabi caste group. It was reconstituted in India following the partition of the
Punjab, after a gap of almost twenty years.37 The society argued that it had named Sardar
Harnam Singh as the Bungai, who was merely given the right to manage the bunga and
read the Guru Granth Sahib. He or his family had no rights to alienate the property at any
time and there existed land documents and an affidavit to prove that Harnam Singh was
only the Bungai. Because of the historical circumstances, referring to the upheaval of
Partition and changes in the composition of the society, as well as the conditions of the
gurdwara, it was argued that the bunga had come under the “adverse” possession of the
management committee. But the society now wished to retain its control over the bunga,
although it had been demolished. Moreover, the society proceeded to not only claim the
bunga land but also demanded that the SGPC cover costs for rebuilding the bunga for
Mazhabi caste pilgrims. The SGPC, on the other hand, argued that their possession of the
bunga was no longer valid, as the SGPC had used it for the “greater good” of the
gurdwara and the Sikh community.
The argument for the greater good of the community meant returning to what the
SGPC claimed was the “original purpose” of all gurdwaras, as had been built by the
Gurus and carried on by Sikhs since. In other words, it meant returning to the moment
when the Sikh Gurdwara Act and the SGPC were created in a more recent past. The
37 Under the title ‘Grounds of Appeal’, point three says, “That admittedly, the Mazhabi Sikh Association is
a Society registered under Act 21 of 1860. No suit can be brought by said society without a resolution
passed by the said society, which is wanting in the present case. As such the plaintiff had no right or
locus standi to file for present suit.” Appeal no. 870, High Court of Punjab and Haryana at
Chandigarh, Judicial Department. The Mazhabi society was registered again based out of Karnal in
Haryana in 1966 with the Registrar of Societies.
146
SGPC frequently quoted Master Tara Singh where he stated that the purpose of creating
the SGPC and the Act was “to utilize the property and income of the gurdwaras for the
purposes for which they were founded and save it from being wasted in luxurious and
immoral living.”38 Since it was claimed that the defendants had come to privately own the
bunga since independence, it was morally sound for the SGPC to intervene and return the
bunga to its original purpose and “to save it from being used for immoral purposes.”39
The case was pivotal in the ways in which the court detailed that bungas could not be
alienated or sold to anyone, regardless of whether the property was abandoned or had
been passed to a manager of an association that did not exist for a period of time. SGPC’s
assertion of representing the greater good of the community was also challenged by the
association, which alleged that the SGPC constituted a select elite that wanted the bungas
demolished for their own private purposes. The Mazhabi Society maintained that it was
important to resurrect the bunga to protect minority caste groups, who had equal rights to
visit the Golden Temple Complex. The SGPC denied the Society the sole rights to the
protection of the lower caste groups by maintaining that it was them, the SGPC, that were
the custodians of the Sikh community, which theoretically did not observe caste.
In this way, they questioned the Mazhabi Society’s “locus standi” in bringing forth
this case. Locus standi meant the legal standing of the Mazhabi Society in proving its
connection with and relation to its previous avatar located in Sheikhupura. The
38 Master Tara Singh, Punjab Legislative Council Debates 3, no. 22 (May 7 and 8, 1925), 1105. 39 While the SGPC acknowledged that the bunga must have been under some form of control with the
Mazhabi Sikh community, they also claimed that after Partition there had been no clarity on their
claims or their existence. As a result, the Bungai Harnam Singh and his family had acquired legal
authority to alienate the property, and the SGPC had legitimately paid the market value of this
property according to the sale value of a non-religious building. For more, see: Appeal no. 870, High
Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh, Judicial Department.
147
Committee challenged the Society’s case by saying that the appellant of the case had no
leadership position in the society and did not represent the concerns or the consensus of
the caste group. The Society, in response, proved its connection with its earlier
manifestation in Shiekhupura by calling witnesses who attested to the Society’s existence
in Shiekhupura and now in India, with a consistent membership in both the places
through the years. The question of locus standi was decided in favour of the Mazhabi
Society. 40 This decision in favour of the Society set a precedent that parties other than the
SGPC could manage and control the rest houses or sarais around the Golden Temple
Complex. After the formation of the SGPC and the local Darbar Sahib Committee, a
series of building projects had been undertaken. One of these was to build new sarais for
the pilgrims, which were close to but remained outside the boundaries of the gurdwara
parikrama.
By returning the bunga to the Society and instructing the SGPC to pay for its
rebuilding, the court allowed and acknowledged the rights of another body within the
gurdwara to function, if only in a small way. But the SGPC continued to fight for its
complete autonomy by arguing for the use of the Sikh Gurdwara Act and claiming that it
took precedence over any other court’s authority or civil code. The Court also decided
that since the SGPC had never filed a case for this bunga in the Gurdwara Tribunal or
under the Sikh Gurdwara Act but had bought the property from other named defendants,
40 “They have locus standi to sue even if it is taken that the Bunga was not founded by the Mazhabi Sikhs of
Sheikhupura district and not managed by them. Any Mazhabi Sikh can come forward and protect the
property belonging to the Mazhabi Sikh community. In AIR 1973 Mysore Page 281 it was held that a
suit by some of the devotees in a representative capacity for possession of the properties of a deity is
competent.” Appeal no. 870, High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh, Judicial Department,
13.
148
whom it was found had no right to alienate the property, the sale could not be treated as
valid.41
While the Court acknowledged the Sikh Gurdwara Act and the Gurdwara
Tribunal’s verdict, it was found that the SGPC had neither approached the tribunal nor
invoked the Act to claim the property. By going to the alleged owners of the bunga and
buying the property from them directly, the SGPC had been involved in a sale that was
not legally recognizable. The Mazhabi Society was granted full rights over the bunga, and
the defendants had to pay the Society relief. The SGPC’s attempt to keep the bunga under
their control for the ‘‘larger good’’ as the higher authority representing Sikh concerns
over those of caste or sects was found less stable than the Mazhabi Society’s claims to
representation. Other court cases and settlements outside the Court similarly challenged
the SGPC’s claims to exclusively represent the Sikh community.
Although the SGPC claimed to represent all Sikh interests regardless of caste,
regional affiliation, or sect, it was found increasingly that the SGPC represented the
interests of a select few. The contests within the SGPC and outside increased over the
years, adding to the ideological differences that people had about the shape and the future
of the gurdwara. Some of these cases will be discussed in the following chapters.
41 The judgment says, “It has not been shown by Sri Darbar Sahib that Boonga in question was claimed by
them as their property under the provisions of the Sikh Gurdwara Act and that no claim/objection was
filed by anybody under the provisions of the Sikh Gurdwara Act and as such Darbar Sahib has
become full owner of the Bunga.” Appeal no. 870, High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh,
Judicial Department, 14.
And, “Defdts 2 to 4 had no right to sell the Bunga. Defdts 2 to 4 stepped into the shoes of Bungai
Harnam Singh. The position of a Bungai is analogous to that of the Mahant in a Hindu shrine. It was
held in AIR 1936 Lah 623 that a bunga institution intended to be reserved as a hostel for pilgrims is
inalienable although there is no formal dedication if it is for religious or charitable purposes… as
bungais they had only the right of management of the Bunga, which was also inalienable (vide AIR
1916 Lah 98). Appeal no. 870, High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh, Judicial
Department, 11.
149
However, no management committee or association can survive if it is solely embroiled
in conflictual relations; the SGPC also figured out ways in which the community could
function and exist in some form of conciliation and cohesiveness. This cohesiveness and
conciliation were created by building rituals and organizing pilgrimage routes on an
annual basis. While the case of the bungas highlights the rifts between different notions
and values of Sikh history, the participation and role of different Sikh groups and the
preservation of these Sikh structures, there were also many rituals that aligned Sikh
interests.
From the two cases discussed above it becomes clear that many bungas were given
to their owners/managers and not to the SGPC, despite its claims to natural inheritance as
the Sikh community’s representative. Also, it was declared that the bungas were
essentially part-religious and part-charitable units and could not be put to any other use.42
Having declared these properties waqf land, it was also declared that the properties could
not be sold to anyone else but could be given over to the SGPC as a “gift.” Most of the
bungas acquired by the SGPC were through this method, of receiving gifts from bunga
owners or managers. But in the case of Bunga Mazhabian, the SGPC was ordered to
return and rebuild the bunga. The bungas affairs are by no means a thing of the past. New
cases regarding these buildings have been filed, and, sensing foul play, the courts have
ordered the SGPC to return these properties to the associations and individuals involved.
For example, Bunga Rangretta was completed recently in 2014 after another prolonged
42 Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak ... v. Raja Shiv Rattan Dev Singh and Ors., March 24, 1955, AIR 1955
SC 576.
150
court case and has been at the centre of controversy for various reasons.43 In the case of
Bunga Rangretta or Bunga Jiwan Singh, history was invoked as much as the social
support for lower-caste Sikhs, reminding the Sikh community that it was Baba Jiwan
Singh, a low-caste Sikh, who had carried the tenth Guru Teghbahadur ji’s body back for
cremation. For this, it is believed that the tenth Guru had given the community the title,
‘Rangretta-Guru ka beta,’ or the sons of the Guru.44 In the next case that I discuss, it
becomes clear how history and historical preservation were applied to save the bunga
from the SGPC’s demolition drive. This is the only bunga that has survived the SGPC’s
parikrama-widening scheme, for the sake of which bungas were demolished.
Bungas as Heritage: Contesting Visions of the Sikh Past
The SGPC attempted to gradually take over bunga properties through different measures
such as buying the properties (although the court declared these to be invalid sales, many
bungas were still “purchased” from their alleged owners/managers), intimidating the
owners by way of pressure tactics, and, of course, taking the issue to the Gurdwara
Tribunal. The cases, as discussed above, took a long time and were an enormous expense
to the Committee. The SGPC’s preferred method was making private settlements with the
owners and managers.
43 Sikh24, “Inauguration of Bunga Baba Jiwan Singh Postponed,” September 29, 2014,
Ram Raheem, who had a major following in Sirsa, Haryana and Punjab and were
considered to be threats to the conventional forms of religious and political bodies like the
SGPC and the SAD (political wing of the SGPC).7 Scholarly works on deras can be
categorized into two fields. Certain works believe deras to be “dens of mischief” and
corruption. Additionally, they critique the followers for their mistreatment of heritage
structures and for privileging new buildings over historical and “authentic” buildings.
Other works consider the caste and class component of dera followers and argue that
deras are recent attractions for marginalized groups.8 In both perspectives, there is an
implicit suggestion that these sants and dera followers are outliers to the mainstream
thought and management of Sikhism. Even in academic works, scholars like Harjot
Oberoi have argued that the tradition of sants and pirs (Muslim spiritual men) was ousted
by the Singh Sabha reformers.9 Contrary to such works and opinions, this chapter takes
into consideration the lineage of sants and deras and their importance to mainstream
religious practices and processes as a serious component of lived religion.
The sant tradition belongs to the North Indian region and has varied schools and
traditions. Karine Schomer argues that the sant tradition is a controversial topic that has
7 Praveen Swami and Aman Sethi, “Faiths at War”, Frontiline, Volume 24, Issue 11, (June 2- 15, 2007),
https://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2411/stories/20070615002602500.htm 8 Harkirat Singh, “Heritage Destroyed by Custodians,” Hindustan Times Amritsar, October 9, 2014;
Surinder S. Jodhka, “Of Babas and Deras,” Seminar, no. 581 (January 2000): 54–57,
http://www.indiaseminar.com/2008/581/581_surinder_jodhka.htm; Varinder Walia, “The Rise and the
Fall,” The Tribune, September 14, 2006, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060914/aplus1.htm;
Surinder Singh, “Deras, Caste Conflict and Recent Violence in Punjab,” Mainstream XLVII, no. 26
(June 13, 2009); Ronki Ram, “Ravidass Deras and Social Protest: Making Sense of Dalit
Consciousness in Punjab,” Asian Studies 67, (November 2008); Ronki Ram, “Untouchability, Dalit
Consciousness, and the Ad Dharm movement in Punjab,” Contribution to Indian Sociology (New
Delhi: Sage Publication, 2004); Ronki Ram, “Social Exclusion, Resistance and Deras,” Economic and
Political Weekly (October 6, 2007); Vandita Mishra, “Inside Dera Sachkhand,” The Indian Express,
May 31, 2009. 9 Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh
Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1994), 316.
hands/; Yudhivir Rana, “Let SGPC Give in Writing, We Will Stop Seva: GNNSJ,” Hindustan Times,
April 28, 2003, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Let-SGPC-give-in-writing-we-
will-stop-seva-GNNSJ/articleshow/-149259456.cms.
170
the Udasis, the Nirmalas, and the Sevapanthis are traditions of sants and deras that are
very different from mainstream Sikh practices and principles of the SGPC. They are
closer to Hindu yogic practices and spirituality. These deras had been well-integrated
with Sikh institutions and practices in the early half of the twentieth century but were
later sidelined by the orthodox leaders of the SGPC.
The final and fourth category of deras have almost become new religions
movements across the globe. Deras like the Sacha Sauda Dera from Sirsa (Haryana) and
are representative of current trends of regional and global politics. These deras attract
lower caste and class communities and are also popular amongst the Sikh diaspora who
have the resources and desire to participate in Sikh religious institutions, albeit from a
distance.
As this chapter shows, these deras are important because of their wide following,
both regionally and globally. They are prominent players in Sikh religious and political
practices and it is for this reason that the SGPC has incorporated them within their
structure. The following section on the kar sevas shows how the sants effectively
influence Sikh traditions and practices. The kar seva of 1923 created a new fervor in the
community to come together and perform an act of religiosity that renewed its sense of
belonging, but at the same time summoned a new mass public into being. There had been
other traditional events where Sikhs had gathered in large numbers in Amritsar, for
example on gurpurabs (birth anniversaries of the Gurus) and other sacred days according
to the agricultural customs in the Punjab. The 1923 kar seva, however, differed by the
sheer scale of people coming into Amritsar. We have reports from the Punjab CID on the
171
huge mass of people arriving into Amritsar, which brought on security fears as a result.23
In a literal sense, the kar seva was just a cleansing of the amrit sarovar to remove the silt
accumulated over the years (sources say it had reached four feet high), but the timing of
the event suggests a deeper meaning.
Deras’ Influence on Kar Sevas: The Continuation of Traditions in the Twentieth Century
From every part of the Punjab, even from the depths of the jungle, Sikhs
flocked in multitudes to Amritsar. Special trains had to be run, in which the
pilgrims were closely packed, some finding room on the foot-boards, the
tender, and even on the engine. It is reckoned that more than 300,000 devotees
took part in the festival, and followed barefoot the ritual procession that
preceded the ceremony. The column of pilgrims was more than three miles
long. Five persons of high rank, known as the ‘Well- beloved,’ inaugurated
the work of digging…. The crowd thronged the Temple walls, some crawling
in the mud, or sinking in it up to their knees, and even waists…, in their efforts
to get near the place where the ‘Well-beloved’ were, so that they could take
away, as soon as the ceremony had begun, a little mud from the sacred
reservoir. This mud they will keep in their homes, and they will leave it to
their descendants. And every hour of every day since the 17th June has seen
the same fervor, the same ritual observances performed by thousands and
thousands of Sikhs.24
The quote above was published in the Illustrated London News for an English
audience regarding a ritualistic event in the Punjab in 1923. Highlighting the volume of
people attending this event, it captures the challenge this event posed for the colonial
officials in the Punjab, for instance, special arrangements had to be made at the railway
station, to ensure that the walled city was secure and there was continuous surveillance in
the area. 25 This event, known as the kar seva of 1923, was occurring at the same time as
23 “Exemption from Terminal Tax of the Articles Imported by the Darbar Sahib Authorities of Amritsar
Income with the Clearance of Silt of the Holy Tanks,” Punjab Government Civil Secretariat, Part B,
Proceedings, File no. 293, 1937/30, April 1923.
24 Illustrated London News, “Where Mud is Sacred: Strange Rites at an Islanded Sikh Shrine,” September
15, 1923, 28, italics added.
25 “Exemption from Terminal Tax of the Articles Imported by the Darbar Sahib Authorities of Amritsar
Income with the Clearance of Silt of the Holy Tanks,” Punjab Government Civil Secretariat, Part B,
Proceedings, File no. 293, 1937/30, April 1923.
172
other gurdwaras in the region were being occupied by Sikhs, to oust traditional mahants
and caretakers. Incidents like that at Nankana Sahib gurdwara were all too fresh in the
memories of the colonial officials and the Sikh participants, wherein a confrontation
between the mahant and Sikh leaders led to physical and violent fights between the two
sides. The kar seva, although motivated by religious feelings, posed a threat to the
colonial officials.
The kar seva of 1923 was one of the earliest mass gatherings organized by the
SGPC, soon after its formation in 1920. At this time, the SGPC was an ‘illegal’ body, and
was under British scrutiny for organizing other politically charged events that occupied
gurdwaras for long periods of time and challenged the mahants authority in these spaces.
The Gurdwara Reform Movement was at its peak during the kar seva. This kar seva
placed the SGPC as the supreme representative of the Sikh community, as opposed to any
other Sikh representative bodies like the Chief Khalsa Diwan, which is structurally
SGPC’s predecessor.
At the time of the kar seva, it was unclear whether the SGPC was purely a political
or religious body.26 It was also unclear whether it was more radical than the previous
reformist body, i.e. The Singh Sabha, and the question of how could the SGPC
distinguish itself from other Sikh bodies and representatives was at large. The Singh
Sabha was a socio-religious reform movement that began in 1881, with the foundation of
the first Sabha in Amritsar. This movement is understood to be the intellectual
“Report of the Pilgrim Committee Regarding the Railway Arrangements for Pilgrim Traffic,” Part A,
Proceedings, March 1922, File no. 214, 35-7 and 49/50 B. 26 Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State: Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab 1849–1947
(Sage, 2005).
173
predecessor of the SGPC, as the SGPC adopted the conservative views of the reformers.
Chief Khalsa Diwan was the first socio-political organization of Sikhs that came into
existence on October 30, 1902. The Chief Khalsa Diwan’s objectives were to promote the
intellectual, moral, educational, and economic welfare of the Khalsa order. They
particularly invested greatly in publishing the Sikh rahit maryadas (code of conduct) and
in propagating the correct practices of Sikhism by compiling works on daily practices
while also promoting the Sikh Education Conference that attended to the issue of Sikhs
education in the twentieth century, focussing specifically on issues of women’s education
and the technical training of the Sikh community in fields of science. The Panch Khalsa
Diwan was more radical in its view of Sikhism and followed similar tactics as the Chief
Khalsa Diwan in promoting Sikhism across Punjab, for example, they published their
own rahit maryada, but this was a lot more stringent than the CKD’s. It was important for
the SGPC to distinguish itself from all these other organizations and establish its authority
quickly. Commonly, newly established competing community groups quickly lost steam
and either dispersed or lost any clout on their followers.27 The beginning of the kar seva
was deeply colored by this context in which it was first organized, and its impact on the
SGPC’s organizational structure has endured.
Kar seva literally means the service (seva) of silt (gar in Persian and kar in
Punjabi), which accumulated at the bottom of the amrit sarovar (sacred water tank).
Volunteers collected and disposed of the silt, a deed considered to be one of the greatest
performances of service by the Sikhs. The quote above says that Sikhs doing this seva
saved the silt as sacred mud and took it to their homes. The silt by being in the gurdwara
27 N. G. Barrier, The Sikhs and Their Literature (Manohar, 1970).
174
is sacred and is considered to have miraculous powers. Sikhs continue to hold on to such
beliefs and I confirmed this during my fieldwork in 2013-14. It is not just the silt though
that is sacred, any part of the gurdwaras’ built-material is now considered sacred, as it has
been a part of the gurdwara for a period. So kar sevas as a term have extended from just
gathering and desilting to building parts of the gurdwara that are essential to the religious
function. This extension of kar seva was instrumental to the deepening ties between the
Gulab Singh Gholia belonged to the dera of Bhai Ram Singh in the Faridkot district.
He was trained as a kirtankari (people who performed hymns at the gurdwara), and to
further train in the scriptures such as the Adi Granth, he studied Sanskrit, which was then
common practice. For this reason, he apprenticed under Giani Anokh Singh in Sangrur,
where he studied Sanskrit and Vedanta for approximately ten years, finally moving on to
Rishikesh to further study classics under Pandit Nihal Singh and Pandit Advaitanand.
Here he also studied Indian medicine. As the Singh Sabha movement gained popularity,
he returned to the Punjab and took on a greater role in the education of Sikhs as well as in
doing kirtan (performing of hymns) in Amrtisar.29 He was actively involved in the
Rikabganj affair in Delhi in 1914, where a group of Sikh reformers contested the building
of the new colonial capital (Delhi) by taking over parts of the gurdwara land.30 Gulab
Singh Gholia’s biographical sketch seems at odds with the present understanding of
Sikhism as defined by the SGPC, where kirtankaris are trained at the Damdami Taksal
and the Sikh Missionary College and not at deras, as discussed in Chapter Two. It would
be difficult today to find professional kirtankaris who are also trained in Indian medicine
or in Vedantic knowledge. There has been a streamlining of professional training with the
SGPC coming to the fore in institutionalizing Sikhism. Yet, deras continue to be very
important to Sikh practices and education, and their significance is even more marked
during kar sevas.
29 Harbans Singh, The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Hemkunt Press, 1998); H. S. Doabia, Life Stories of the
Sikh Saints (Singh Brothers, 1995); Ruchi Ram Sahni, Struggle for Reform in Sikh Shrines (Sikh
Itithas Research Board,1942); Joginder Singh, Sikh Leadership in the Early Twentieth Century
(GNDU, 1999). 30 Harjot Oberoi, “From Gurdwara Rikabganj to the Viceregal Palace,” Punjab Past and Present 14 (1980):
182-98; Mrinalini Rajagopalan, “1918–Rasul Numa Dargah: Interrupting the Archive; Indigenous
Voices and Colonial Hegemony,” in Building Histories (Chicago University Press, 2017): 59–86; K.
L. Tuteja, Sikh Politics 1920–40 (Vishal Publications, 1984).
179
Baba Sham Singh ji, another of the panj piare in the 1923 kar seva, has a dera
dedicated to him in the Atta Mandi (an area in the walled city located in close proximity
to the Golden Temple), which is fairly popular in Amritsar even amongst the Amritdhari
Sikhs (baptized Sikhs).31 Baba Sham Singh had also been a kirtankari at the Golden
Temple, just like Gulab Singh Gholia, and his followers believed he lived for 125 years,
from 1800 till 1925. They believed he was a kirtankari at the Golden Temple for 75 years,
from the 1840s onwards.32 Legends have it that Baba Sham Singh ji was adopted by a
Sevapanthi, Sant Bhai Ram Singh. Sevapanthis are a dera founded in the seventeenth
century when the Sikhs were being persecuted and when many battles were fought
between the Sikhs and Mughal and Afghan forces. This dera believes in doing service
without any discrimination. Its followers believed it was the caretaker of some of the
bungas around the Golden Temple. Sevapanthis are also known to have a close
association with the Udasi sants and the Nirmalas. These three sampradayas (traditions of
learning) were prolific in their literary activity and were custodians of the Golden Temple
at some point from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.33 Baba Sham Singh ji
31 Personal interviews with devotees coming into the dera over a period of three months from June to
September 2013. I was introduced to this dera by a contact who is an Amritdhari Sikh. He and his
family have been devotees of the dera for more than a generation. 32 Major Prem Singh, Jivan Braham Giani Sant Baba Sham Singh (Sohan Singh Pub., Amritsar, 1978);
Giani Balwant Singh, Agam Agadh Purakh Shriman Pujya Sant Attar Singh Ji Maharaj Mastuane
Valian da Sampuran Jivan Charittar (Mastuana Pub., 1983); Suraj Singh, Baba Sham Singh Ji (no
pub., no date). 33 Gurinder Singh Mann, “Sikh Studies and the Sikh Educational Heritage,” in Studying the Sikhs: Issues
for North America, ed. John Stratton Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann (SUNY Press, 1993), 95–112;
Gurinder Singh Mann, “Teaching the Sikh Tradition: A Course at Columbia,” in Studying the Sikhs,
129–160; Christopher Shackle, “Survey of Literature in the Sikh Tradition,” Oxford Handbook of Sikh
Studies, ed. Pashaura Singh and Louis Fenech (Oxford University Press, 2014); Eleanor Nesbitt,
Sikhism: A Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005); Harbans Singh, The Encyclopedia of
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